


An Unexpected Engagement (or: A Japanese Boy’s Guide to (English) Love and Marriage)

by darkdropout



Series: A Japanese Boy’s Guide to... [2]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - British, Angst, British English, Bullying, M/M, Minor Injuries, Misunderstandings, Non-Graphic Violence, recreational alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5592796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkdropout/pseuds/darkdropout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to A Japanese Boy’s Guide to English Boarding School. England 1926. Ohno and Nino, now university students, face new trials together on British soil, including the unanticipated return of a long-lost friend – and his sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Additional notes and goodies can be found [**here**](http://darkdropout.livejournal.com/100210.html#cutid1).

ENGLAND, 1926

“London?” Nino says over the tinny line. There’s a long static pause and Ohno can imagine the tight purse of Nino’s lips on the other side of the receiver. “But I was expecting you to spend the weekend here with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Ohno says as sweetly as he can, “but I can’t avoid it.”

Nino huffs in annoyance. “I know, I know. Your very mysterious London excursions. But perhaps you’ve forgotten that Michaelmas is soon and the new term will start. And so we won’t see each other for – ” He’s pauses and when he speaks again his voice is much smaller. “ – for a long while.” 

Silence fills the line and Ohno feels it acutely. The truth is that he is dreading his trip, just as he always does, and it’s made all the worse by coinciding with what he’s known all along is almost certainly the last chance he’ll have to see Nino until Christmas. 

Unless.

“Come with me then,” he says suddenly and there’s a surprised sounding sputter in reply.

“Pardon?” says Nino, astounded.

“To London. Come with me. You can meet me there and when I’ve finished my – ” He struggles for the right word. “ – my errand, we can spend a few days in the city.”

“Oh-chan, are you inviting me to go to London with you? For the first time in two – no _three_ years?”

“I’m inviting you,” Ohno agrees. “I want to see you.”

It’s silent again. Ohno thinks that he’s lost the connection until Nino’s voice crackles through, happy and a little smug. 

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to go and pack my bags then.”

***

Nino is already waiting when Ohno arrives at Victoria Station. He’s standing near the ticket window with his luggage at his feet, and, under the curved brim of his bowler, wearing his standard travel accessory of an enormous scowl. He holds onto that expression only until Ohno is close enough to hear his loud complaints about the “horrid state of modern travel.” It's not the first time Ohno has heard this tirade. He’s long since grow accustom to it – for all Nino’s worldliness, his effortless adaptability, he has never traveled well. 

Nino complaints dwindle once they are settled in the back of a taxi, and as they do, Ohno feels his nerves flicker to life. Now that Nino has recovered himself from the journey, Ohno knows that he’ll start asking questions. It’s only a matter of time.

In fact, it’s only a matter of minutes.

“Where are we going to?” Nino asks. He’s placed his hand beside Ohno’s on the seat between them, their pinkies brushing discreetly, as he looks absentmindedly out the window at the bustling city streets.

This is the question Ohno has been dreading.

“I have to see Mr. Sumimoto,” he explains, keeping his tone even and relaxed. Perhaps if he doesn’t draw attention to his answer, Nino won’t notice it.

There is no such luck. Nino pulls his gaze away from the London view to give Ohno his full attention. 

“Mr. Sumimoto? You can’t mean – _the_ Mr. Sumimoto? Of Sumimoto Bank?” he asks and whatever wild hope Ohno had that the name would go over Nino’s head is immediately trampled.

“His son,” Ohno replies, shrugging off the inquiry as casually as he can, but this only serves to interest Nino more.

“Whatever is your business with _him_?” Nino asks, with only a moderate amount of accusation in his manner.

Ohno clears his throat as now he turns to face the window, mumbling out, “He’s my financial guardian.”

That sets Nino nearly breathing down his neck with curiosity. “ _What on Earth does that mean?_ ”

Ohno turns back to him. He lowers his voice, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the less than furtive glances coming from the taxi’s driver. For once, he feels thankful for the language barrier. “He’s in charge of my allowance and keeps track of my expenses while I’m in England.”

Nino eyes him suspiciously – it’s clear that the outrageousness of the insinuation that Mr. Sumimoto himself would be the financial advisor to someone like Ohno has not been lost on him, as Ohno had once hoped it might be. But as Ohno continues to shoot uneasy glances towards the front of the cab, Nino does not press further.

*

Whatever of Nino’s suspicion Ohno had succeeded in quelling on the expedition over, that suspicion is redoubled when they arrive at their destination – not, as anyone might assume, the Sumimoto Banking Offices, but instead, the private residence of Mr. Hideyoshi Sumimoto himself.

“Oh-chan, what is going on?” Nino asks, now clearly unsettled as the taxi idles at the elaborate front gate.

“It will only take a few minutes,” is all Ohno can reply. “You can wait for me here if you like.”

Nino hesitates for only a moment. 

“Absolutely not,” he declares. He pushes open the car door before Ohno can stop him. “I’ve no idea what shady business you’ve embroiled yourself in, but I certainly refuse to be left out of it.”

“It isn’t shady,” Ohno insists, stumbling out behind Nino and struggling to catch up as Nino invites himself through the gate and marches towards the front door. 

But he can understand why Nino might make such assumptions, as Ohno’s appearance on the premises is greeted with polite familiarity and they are quickly ushered into the private parlour of Mr. Sumimoto without even being asked to provide their cards.

Nino looks like he might simply burst open wide with the number of questions skittering about his brain, but Ohno is relieved that he has no chance to ask them. They have only just seated themselves to wait then Mr. Sumimoto enters the room.

“Satoshi-kun, good to see you,” he says as Ohno scrambles up from his seat, bowing low before shaking Mr. Sumimoto’s outstretched hand.

“Sumimoto-san,” Ohno says. He gestures to where Nino is standing beside him, all of the puzzlement having been wiped from his face as he bows politely. “This is Ninomiya Kazunari – of Oxford University and previously of Tokyo.”

“An honor to meet you, sir,” Nino says, shaking Mr. Sumimoto’s hand. “I hope that I am not intruding.”

“Ninomiya,” Mr. Sumimoto repeats sternly, looking Nino over with his sharp gaze. “Am I familiar with your family?”

“You may be, sir,” Nino replies in perfect _keigo_. “My father is _kaiseki_ master chef, Ninomiya Takanori. I believe he has had your father as an honored guest.”

Unexpectedly, Mr. Sumimoto’s face brightens considerably. “Ah, so he has. I too have been in your father’s care often, and very happily. I was not aware he had a son living abroad – Oxford you said? What are you reading?”

Nino smiles graciously. “Music, sir.”

“Very good,” Mr. Sumimoto says approvingly, _amiably_ even, as Ohno gawks besides him, barely able to comprehend the occurrences taking place before him – and not only because of the _keigo_.

“Well Ninomiya-kun,” says Mr. Sumimoto, gesturing for Nino to sit again. “If you’ll please make yourself comfortable. I will not keep Satoshi-kun for long.”

As Ohno quickly follows Mr. Sumimoto through the door and across the hall to his personal office, he glances back one last time to where Nino has been left behind. Nino is staring at him, his expression fallen from its gracious charm to a perplexity so complete it’s almost comical. 

The door to Mr. Sumimoto’s office closes between them.

*

Fifteen minutes later, Ohno is hurrying back towards their waiting taxi, a cheque in hand, and Nino hot on his heels. 

They’re halfway down the front walk when Nino catches up enough to grab Ohno by the elbow, pulling him forcefully to a stop. 

“Oh-chan,” he says, as he keeps a tight grip on Ohno’s jacket, making evasion impossible. “When will you tell me what this is all about?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Ohno assures him, weakly.

Nino does not let go, his dark eyes searching Ohno’s face before he speaks again. 

“Satoshi, I understand retrieving an allowance from your parents – I do the same, every so often.” He stops, pursuing his lips. “But I, like most, do so from the _bank_. Not from the home of one of the most powerful men in international finance.”

“It’s just an arrangement of my father’s,” Ohno tries to explain. 

He struggles a little against Nino’s grasp, desperate to get back to the taxi where their discussion will have to come to a stop. He manages to break free, but before he can remove himself completely, Nino snatches the cheque from his hand.

Shocked, Ohno grabs for the precious piece of paper in the hopes of retrieving it. Nino blocks his advances, pushing a hand firmly into Ohno’s chest and nearly knocking him to the ground, all while holding the cheque up, squinting far-sightedly at its contents.

“By God, you’re absolutely loaded!” Nino gasps, eyes widening. The arm he’s used to keep Ohno at bay drops limply to his side at the same time Ohno stops fighting against it. “Why did you never say? I’ve been entangled with a millionaire!”

“Not a millionaire,” Ohno argues. He grabs the cheque back hastily, stuffing it into his coat pocket. 

But Nino barely notices, beaming delightedly in Ohno’s direction. “No need to deny it – I’ve already counted all the zeros! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need to find the nearest post office at once. I must write to my mother and tell her I’ll be _tama no koshi ni noru_! She’ll be so very proud, I think she may even cry upon hearing of it!”

“Don’t joke about that,” Ohno says, mood souring even as Nino’s soars. 

He turns to start towards the front gate again when he feels a firm tug on the back of his jacket.

“Oh-chan, don’t be so serious,” Nino says, placating. “You can’t think that I really mean it. Although I must say that it’s difficult to believe you hadn’t told me. You were hiding your fortune from me all this time.” 

He does sound a little hurt and it sends a guilty twinge through Ohno’s chest.

“It’s not my fortune. It’s my father’s fortune,” he says, a bit more defensively than he means to.

Nino shakes his head, unwilling to accept this explanation. “You told me your father worked in business.”

“He _does_ work in business. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I take what he gives me because he insists that I do and that’s all there is to it. But once I’ve finished university, I won’t accept it anymore.”

Nino’s jaw drops slack. “But why?! You’d write off so very many zeros?” he asks in horror.

Ohno lifts a hand to rub over his eyes. This is a conversation they shouldn’t be having – not here, on Mr. Sumimoto’s front walk, and not anywhere else. It’s something Ohno had hoped, perhaps naively, that Nino shouldn’t have to – would never have to hear.

But Ohno tells him anyway.

“Because if I continue to take the money, there will be expectations. There _are_ expectations.”

Ohno watches as Nino digests this information – his expression unmoving, but his eyes changing, slowly, from glittering to dull and unbearably readable.

“You – don’t tell me – are you saying that you’re to be married off?” he asks, softly.

Ohno is the one to reach out this time, taking Nino’s hand gently, right there in the front walk. 

“Did you hear what I said?” he says, quiet but firm, as Nino’s cold fingers twitch in his hold. “I am not accepting the money. I am not accepting the marriage. I always intended to give it up after I finished my schooling – that has never, will never, change.”

The corner of Nino’s mouth quirks up feebly. “And here I thought it might be some romantic gesture to show your love for me.”

Ohno smiles, squeezing Nino’s hand. “And that.”

Nino relaxes, swiping a hand over his face as he seems to will back his composure. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, his tone recovered into a familiar boyish sulk.

“I meant to.”

Nino rolls his eyes. He removes his hand from Ohno’s and begins to walk towards the gate again, towards the taxi, as he says, “But _when_? You’d wait until your expected wedding day?”

“I wouldn’t wait that long,” Ohno says, falling into step beside him. 

They pass through the gate and the taxi driver steps out to open the door for them, professional enough not to look the least bit annoyed at their delayed arrival. They settle once again into the back seat.

“Of course you would,” Nino teases, a good sign that he’s much recovered from the series of shocking revelations he’s endured so far today. “That’s exactly what you would do.”

Ohno wishes he could kiss Nino, right there, in the back of the taxi. Instead he places his hand on the seat between them and waits.

It’s not until they’ve pulled out into the bustling city traffic that Nino’s hand settles down beside his, their pinkies brushing.

“If you’re so rich you could have paid for my train ticket,” he mumbles grumpily.

Ohno only laughs.

*

The hotel room they check into is lavish – accommodations included, Ohno admits to Nino after some prodding, with the Sumimotos’ financial services. Mr. Sumimoto himself had called ahead to have a second room prepared for Nino’s convenience. Upon seeing it, Nino threatens not to leave it at all – even as he proactively musses the bed sheets, shuffles things around in the bathroom and hangs the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the knob before closing the door behind him with his luggage in hand and crossing the hall to encamp himself in Ohno’s suite.

“This place must be at least twice the size of the house I grew up in!” Nino is howling from the bedroom when Ohno finally finds the telegram waiting quietly for him on the desk.

“What it is?” Nino asks, head poking out from around the bedroom doorframe as Ohno stands frozen in his place, the telegram clasped in his hand. 

“Oh-chan?” he asks again when there is no answer. “Are you feeling quite all right?”

Ohno looks up then, stunned. “It’s a note from Sho-kun – Sakurai Sho – ” he says. “He’s in London with his younger sister. Mr. Sumimoto told him that I was here and he wants to meet me.” 

“Sakurai Sho? Your childhood friend?” Nino steps out from the doorway. His jacket is off, tie loose and shirt halfway unbuttoned, making it clear that he’s had their evening planned already. “The one who moved back to Japan?”

Ohno is tempted to follow Nino’s lead, but the paper in his hand feels heavier and heavier every moment, until he can no longer ignore it. He nods in reply to Nino’s question. “I’m sorry, but I’ll – I’ll have to run one more errand.”

Nino raises a curious eyebrow. “To see Sakurai?”

“Yes,” says Ohno. 

“Very well,” Nino says, mature enough to pout only a little as he begins to rebutton his shirt, slipping his suspenders back up over his shoulders before he refastens his tie. “With his sister, you said? You’ve never mentioned to me that he had a sister. Do you know her at all?”

Ohno doesn’t answer right away, the words sticking in his throat. It’s not until Nino has returned from retrieving his jacket to find Ohno still standing stiffly in the same place that he notices the look on Ohno’s face – sees the way Ohno’s eyes are bright with anxiety. 

“Satoshi?” he asks, and he sounds anxious himself.

“His sister,” Ohno whispers, “is my fiancée-to-be.”

***

The first thing that strikes Ohno is that Sho Sakurai is very much taller than the last time they met.

“Satoshi-kun, it's so immensely good to see you. It’s been far too long!’ Sho says, taking Ohno’s hand in both of his own and shaking it warmly.

“Six years, nearly seven,” Ohno says, blinking in surprise as he is forced to look upwards to meet Sho’s gaze. Sho had always been small for his age, smaller than Ohno himself for the entirety of their friendship all those years ago. But faced with him now, so tall and dapper, it’s hard to imagine it ever to have been true.

Still Ohno is glad to see him, and he smiles with affection. Sho immediately mirrors the gesture and Ohno is relieved to find that at least that is the same – Sho’s long-toothed grin is exactly as Ohno had remembered it.

“You look extremely well,” Sho says, still clasping Ohno’s hand. “Extremely well. Really it’s been too long. It feels as if only yesterday we were running wild together through my mother’s back garden in Tokyo.”

“Pretending to be samurai?” Ohno says, laughing at the sudden, vivid memory of trying to make his hair stay up in a carefully tangled-up topknot.

“Rival samurai, don’t you forget!” Sho reminds him. “I still have a considerably large lump on the back of my head from where you ambushed me outside the bakery during the climax of our most epic battle.”

It’s then Sho catches sight of Nino, standing politely at Ohno’s side. “Oh, please excuse my rudeness!” he says, letting go of Ohno’s hand with some embarrassment. “I seem to have completely forgotten my manners in favor of childhood reminiscence. I hope you can forgive me. I am Sakurai Sho.”

Nino bows his head and shakes Sho’s hand cordially. “Ninomiya Kazunari. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Sakurai-senpai.”

“Senpai?” Sho’s brow wrinkles inquisitively as he looks Nino over.

“We were at school together,” Nino explains. “Or rather, I believe we just missed each other. I was a Sixth Form Entrant when you would have been in your fifth year.”

“Oh!” says Sho delightedly. “Oh, I see. How excellent! What a pity we missed each other. Are you at Cambridge now too?”

Nino shakes his head. “Oxford.”

“Oxford!” Sho says, noticeably impressed. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to indulge me and let me hear all about your time there in great detail. It was my dream to attend Oxford for many years.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Nino agrees, clearly pleased with the attention as he discreetly knocks elbows with Ohno beside him.

Sho steps back, stretching an arm out towards the rest of house in a hospitable manner. “Now if you gentlemen would like to follow me to the drawing room. My sister has been awaiting your arrival with much anticipation!”

“I like him,” Nino whispers approvingly as Sho leads them onward.

“He’s so tall,” is Ohno’s reply and Nino can only raise an amused eyebrow at him before they follow Sho down the hall.

*

Mai Sakurai is indeed waiting for them in the drawing room, looking slightly apprehensive as she sits on the very edge of an elaborately stuffed chaise.

She stands as they enter the room, smiling shyly. Her face is round and soft-featured, making her unmistakably a relation of her brother’s, and her dark hair is pinned up into a short bob that peaks out from beneath a cream-coloured cloche. Although she is dressed in the most fashionable of English styles – a day dress artfully embroidered and belted low around its pleated skirt – the way she holds herself in it conveys a self-consciousness verging on discomfort.

“Mai,” Sho says, fond in a way he clearly can’t help but be around his sister. “You remember Satoshi-kun.”

“Yes,” she says. She bows her head politely. “It’s so very nice to see you again, Satoshi-kun.” 

Ohno bows lightly in return. “Mai-san.”

“And this is Mr. Ninomiya Kazunari, an Oxford scholar and a guest of Satoshi-kun,” Sho says gesturing to Nino.

“Miss Sakurai,” Nino says. 

Unlike Ohno, he takes a step forward and bows deeply. When he rises, Mai holds out a tentative gloved hand. 

“How do you do, sir. Please, call me Mai.” 

“How do you do,” Nino says, taking her hand and giving her his most absolutely charming smile. 

Mai smiles at him in return, and as she does so, some of her previous anxiety seems to have left her.

Beside her, Sho beams.

“Will the both of you dine with us tonight?” Sho asks in a sudden burst, then realizing his forwardness, back tracks to politely add, “If you are not already otherwise engaged.”

Before Ohno can open his mouth to answer, Nino is already grinning. 

“We’d be delighted,” Nino says.

***

“You were flirting with her,” Ohno pouts, rolling over onto his stomach and burrowing his face into the extravagant goose feather pillow to sulk.

“I certainly was not,” Nino says, but his smile has turned into a satisfied smirk as he flops down beside Ohno. He reaches up to unpin his collar and loosen his tie. “It’s not my fault you’ve never been taught the proper way to present yourself to a young lady of means. Why anyone assumes you would make an acceptable husband is impossible to fathom.”

“You find me acceptable,” Ohno mumbles into the pillow, refusing to lift his head. All that he can see from the corner of his eye is one of Nino’s awful yellow socks, peeking out from under his trouser leg. It’s too cold now for Nino’s long favoured knickerbockers and Ohno will mourn for the loss of them until spring.

Nino moves his leg and the yellow sock disappears out of view. Ohno feels a warm hand resting on his waist. Petulantly, he turns away to face the wall, but the hand follows him and soon Nino is curling up against him, tangling their legs together and nosing against the back of Ohno’s neck.

“Yes, in fact, I do,” Nino whispers. He presses a gentle kiss to Ohno’s skin, then pushes up on his elbows to continue to scatter kisses across whatever bit of Ohno’s face is not still hidden as he continues to speak. “And I for one – am very happy – that you would make – such a ghastly – marriage prospect.”

Ohno turns over with the intention of continuing to vent his displeasure, but Nino doesn’t let him. No sooner has Ohno revealed himself, than Nino dives in for a fervent kiss. Ohno’s moan of protest is quickly quieted in favor of a returned enthusiasm.

“I’m supposed to be jealous of you, you know,” Nino complains when they finally break apart sometime later. He stretches cat-like, languid and satisfied. “Not the other way round. Especially as you neglected to mention that Mai is so beautiful.”

“Is she?” Ohno says vaguely.

Nino give a playful tug to Ohno’s hair, stuck up in that way it always is by the end of the day as if defying the laws of gravity. “Don’t pretend not to have noticed. Even you can’t have missed it.”

“I didn’t know,” Ohno claims. “I hadn’t seen her since she was nine!”

“Hm,” Nino muses. Then he falls quiet, running a hand through his already mussed hair. “Maybe you should marry her,” he says.

Ohno wrinkles his nose with distaste. “I couldn’t marry her. She looks exactly like Sho. It would be like _marrying Sho._ ”

“And is that the only reason you couldn’t? Because she looks like Sho?” Nino asks, voice once again darkening as he brushes his fingertips across Ohno’s cheek, his thumb catching at the corner of Ohno’s mouth.

“There are a lot of reasons,” says Ohno. He reaches out to capture Nino’s wrist, yanking it stubbornly as he tries to pull Nino down beside him again. Nino doesn’t give way.

“Perhaps you should list them for me,” Nino says, smiling in the most immodest way. “Only, I’m curious to hear them.”

“One,” Ohno starts as Nino frees himself from Ohno's grasp to tug at Ohno’s collar, popping open the top button. “She looks like Sho-kun.”

Nino nods his head. “You’ve said.”

“Two,” says Ohno as Nino moves onto the next shirt button. “I’m not the marrying kind.”

“You mean, you’d make a terrible husband,” Nino remarks, the third button already undone.

Ohno pouts again. “Stop saying that.”

“Just reminding you,” Nino answers sweetly as another button slips through his fingers. “Is that all of them?”

“Am I on three?” Ohno asks, feeling a little distracted.

“Three,” Nino confirms, sounding a little distracted now too. Several more buttons are pulled free, this time impatiently.

“Three,” Ohno repeats, “she isn’t my type.”

Nino reaches the final button. He pauses, looking up at Ohno as he asks, “And what is your type?”

Ohno doesn’t answer. He slides a hand behind Nino’s neck, pulling him forward, and this time Nino does not resist – not, at least, until they are less than a breath apart. 

“You know,” Nino murmurs into the space between them. “If you married her, I could be your secret lover. I would do it. For the money.”

Ohno brushes his smile against Nino’s mouth. “What money?” he asks.

Nino pulls back then, abruptly. He stands up from the bed, leaving Ohno shirtless, disheveled and unsatisfied. 

“Do you know what time it is?” he says as Ohno blinks at him in heavy-lidded confusion. “Get yourself dressed for dinner. You must look presentable to your bride-to-be or she’ll simply run in the other direction.” 

Ohno sits up, sulking as he attempts to rebutton his shirt while Nino busies himself across the room and out of reach. “Why do you know how to flirt so well with girls anyway?” he asks Nino suspiciously. 

Nino waves a hand at him dismissively, although once again he looks smug. “I’ve girls on my campus of course. You knew that.”

“Do you flirt with them too?” Ohno asks, with a pout.

“The only person I flirt with,” Nino says dramatically, as he disappears into the bathroom to fix his rumbled hair, “is you, sir.” 

***

The restaurant Sho invites them to is exceptionally high class, the kind of place that Ohno would never dare to enter under normal circumstances. He finds it hard not to openly balk at the menu prices. It’s made more difficult when Nino kicks him under the table at the same time, as an unneeded reminder that Nino himself will choose to order the cheapest thing on the menu and push it around on his plate for the entirety of the meal.

Nino hates these kinds of places as much as Ohno does. The two of them don’t often eat out together, a point which Nino regularly brings to Ohno’s attention but never seems to pursue any further than his initial complaint. Nino is the pickiest of eaters, Ohno the least, which makes them extremely well-suited for sharing meals in what Nino calls “the most ungentlemanly of ways, and therefore, Oh-chan, hideously inappropriate for dining in public so certainly we’ll have to stay in, and if we’re to be in anyway, you might as well let me loosen your tie for you.”

Ohno is sure that Nino would much rather have stayed in – and if he wasn’t so busy pretending to be interested in everything Sho has had to say since they sat down to dine, he would be very bad tempered for being here. Even after Sho commits the unforgivable transgression of ordering only the most expensive items from the menu and enough of them to feed several times their small party, Nino seems quite content to continue conversing with him. By the time the meal is served, Ohno is struck by the odd and increasingly uneasy feeling that Nino and Sho are the ones who are old friends.

“Egyptology?” Nino says in a manner of disbelief that awakens Ohno from his musings. He looks between Nino and Sho uncomprehendingly.

“Yes,” Sho replies, still speaking with the warm enthusiasm that hasn’t left him since the first moment of their reunion. Ohno wonders how he can be so very enthusiastic for so many hours. “Satoshi-kun can attest, I should think, to it being an interest I picked up during my time in England and I continued to study after I returned to Japan. My first expedition was last summer. Perhaps you are familiar with the British School of Archeology in Egypt?”

“Indeed,” says Nino easily and Ohno feels little surprise at that – Nino has made it clear for many years now, equally in both boasting and in practice, that he knows practically everything about every subject.

“I hope to make time on this trip to meet with the Dean there regarding the possibility that I might take up a position in that school –” Sho explains, then pauses, eyes flitting briefly to his sister before he says, in an unchanged tone, “ – if my father will approve it of course. Currently, I assist in his political matters, but I hope that he might be able to spare me in future so that I can pursue my interests.”

“And you Miss Mai? What are your aspirations?” Nino asks, turning to Mai who has until now been only politely listening to the conversation.

Mai looks quite startled by the question and by being included in the conversation at all. Her eyes round slightly as she opens her mouth. Floundering, she glances to her brother for help.

“Mai is extremely bright,” Sho offers, immediately coming to his sister’s rescue. “She was the top of her high school class.”

“I see,” says Nino, although he remains turned in Mai’s direction even as Sho speaks. “And will you continue with your education?”

Mai’s expression has turned from surprised to perplexed. She nods slowly, before answering. “I would like to – to perhaps attend one of the women’s colleges if I can.”

“I’ve done my best to encourage her,” Sho adds. “And I’ve assured her that Satoshi-kun will have no arguments against it, will you Satoshi-kun?”

It’s Ohno’s turn to be startled out of his silence observation, and he is – a long moment passing before he manages to nod his head in mortification. Across the table, Mai’s cheeks have be coloured scarlet, her eyes now turned down to her plate.

Nino clears his throat, and a glance in his direction is enough to assure Ohno that he’s been just as flustered by the sudden mention of the future marriage arrangement. “What will you study?” he asks politely, even as Ohno sees his fingers curl unhappily into his napkin.

“Economics,” she says, and although her cheeks are still red she sounds more confident than before.

“Well if that is the case,” Nino says, “perhaps you will look at Oxford as an option? We have our own integrated campus where men and women can study together. I would be happy to give you a personal tour of the colleges if you should ever be in the area.”

Mai looks up from her plate and smiles. “I would like that very much.”

“I’m sure we can arrange it!” Sho interjects.

“Jolly good!” says Nino. “Now, Sho-kun, you must tell me more about growing up with our senpai. Only it has come to my attention as of late that he has left out some important details when recounting it to me.” 

Sho opens his mouth, seemingly ready to oblige, when a waiter steps up to their table with a silver tray in hand.

“Mr. Sakurai,” he says, holding out the tray so that Sho can retrieve the note placed there. “Forgive me for interrupting your meal, but there is a message for you.”

Sho accepts the paper, reading it over quickly with a creased brow. “It’s my father,” he says when he’s finished. “I’m afraid that there is some urgent business I must attend to and I will have to leave at once. Mai – ” 

He turns to his sister, then hesitates, looking back and forth between Mai and Ohno with some concern.

Ohno hardly notices this, relief washing over him as he starts to stand from his seat, already very ready for this evening to come to a close. But before he can move any further, he’s being pulled down again, Nino’s hand firm on his elbow.

“If Miss Mai would like to stay behind, I would be more than happy to act as a chaperone for her and Ohno-san,” Nino offers.

“Really?” Sho says, with obvious thankfulness. “You wouldn’t mind? I would not want to trouble you, but I hate to drag Mai away on my business when she is so enjoying herself.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Nino assures him charmingly, as he pulls at Ohno’s elbow, hard enough to force Ohno to retake his seat.

“Mai, would you like to stay?” Sho asks.

Mai looks hesitant, once again glancing shyly in Nino and Ohno’s direction. Nino gives her an encouraging smile, Ohno something he’s afraid is much closer to a grimace. She looks back at her brother.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I think I would.”

“Excellent,” says Sho. “Then you shall stay and I will come to collect you as soon as I am finished.” 

Sho says his goodbyes quickly and removes himself from the table with only one longing glance at the unfinished remains of his dinner. It’s not until he has left that Nino leans in towards Mai, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eyes.

“Tell me Miss Mai, do you like magic tricks?”

Mai smiles, her most genuine one yet. “Very much,” she replies.

*

Although Nino and Ohno make the most of the rest of their time together in the privacy of their hotel room, Ohno can’t help but feel confused by recent events and the swiftness with which they’ve come to pass. 

The most worrying of these is certainly the invitation. When Sho had returned to collect his sister at the end of what had turned out to be an evening showcase of some of Nino’s most marvelous card tricks, the siblings had spoken quietly together for a moment before appearing to come to some kind of decision.

Mai had been the one to propose it. “On behalf of my brother and myself, I’d like to ask you to join us for Christmas at our country house,” she had said with some animation before a sudden return of her shyness seemed to make her stumble. “That – that is, if you haven’t any other plans.”

“Are you certain you want to go?” Ohno asks Nino later, as the return train to Oxford pulls slowly into the station.

“Why not?” says Nino. “We hadn’t any plans and it will be nice to spend a holiday off campus for a change. Besides, I like them.”

“But – ” Ohno is interrupted as the train lets out a monumental whistle. He waits with some frustration for it to quiet again, Nino smiling at him bemusedly. 

“But they think I’m going to marry her,” he finishes finally.

Nino reaches up to run a hand over Ohno’s notched lapel, smoothing it out thoughtfully. “They do. But this was your plan, wasn’t it? To wait until you’ve finished your degree and then break your ties. In that case, you should at least make an effort to play along – unless you want them to get suspicious before you can confront them with the truth. Sho-kun may be good-natured, but I’m afraid he is much more observant than you would give him credit for.”

Ohno frowns and when Nino pulls his hand away, Ohno catches it, holds it. “I don’t want to lie to them,” he says. “I’m not good at it.”

Nino’s smile has turned fond now. “I’ll help you. And it won’t be for long. As Sho-kun said, they’ll only be here through the winter season.”

Ohno nods, a little reluctantly, then, even more reluctantly, lets go of Nino’s hand so that Nino can step up into the train.

“Don’t worry so much,” Nino says. 

He waves as the train begins to pull away. Ohno takes a few steps along with it, Nino still standing in the open doorway, hand frozen in the air. Then the train begins to pick up speed, and Ohno stops, watching it go on without him.

“Au revoir,” Nino calls out to him and Ohno smiles. 

Even from afar, Ohno can’t miss the terrible pronunciation. 

***

Nino is up to bat when he finally catches sight of Ohno, who has been quietly watching the cricket match from the sidelines for the past half an hour. As the bowler throws his pitch, Ohno gives a gentle wave in Nino’s direction. Nino blinks at him with disbelief, and it’s only in the last second, the ball whirling towards him without mercy, that he seems to remember himself. He swings hard and neatly cracks the ball across the field. 

When the match breaks twenty minutes later, Nino only half-pretends not to run full speed over to Ohno’s side. Ohno watches with amusement, suddenly struck with the nostalgic memory of 16-year-old Nino, tumbling off the field to greet him. 

His heart aches.

“What on Earth are you doing here?” Nino pants giddily once he’s in front of Ohno. He reaches out to tug at Ohno’s sleeve with ill-disguised excitement. 

Ohno shrugs as nonchalantly as he can manage in the face of such attention. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d come to see your match.”

Nino grins widely enough to show the pink of his gums. “How suspicious. Should I be worried?”

“I just wanted to see you,” Ohno says honestly, smiling too when he feels Nino’s grip tighten into his jacket. “I missed you.”

Nino seems to struggle for a reply. Finally, he settles on taking Ohno by the arm and dragging him off in the direction of his college. Ohno finds that to be the best reply of all.

*

“Il disait cela pour être contredit. Son œil fier et brillant disait qu’il se savait séduisant, et il ne pensait guère à Anne en désignant ainsi la femme qu’il voudrait rencontrer : « Un esprit fort, uni à une grande douceur. »” 

Ohno closes the book once he finishes the chapter. He’s glad that he remembered to bring it with him on the train this morning, if only so he could have it when Nino inevitably asked for him to read.

“I think I might have understood it this time,” Nino says, stirring from where he’s settled himself with his head in Ohno’s lap.

Ohno just hums indulgently, continuing to brush his hand through Nino’s hair as Nino’s eyes flutter shut despite his obvious attempts to keep them open. Ohno wonders how many times they’ve done this, how many times they’ve been in this position, reading this very book – or another, Nino always so delighted in telling Ohno that they’re all the same to him when he knows it makes Ohno cross to hear it.

Countless times, Ohno decides as he draws his fingers lightly across Nino’s brow. Nino wrinkles his nose, but still leans into the touch, just as he always does.

Ohno doesn’t realize he’s decided to speak until he hears the words leave his mouth.   
“Will I break her heart, do you think?” he asks Nino quietly.

Perhaps such a remark seems to come from nowhere, but for Ohno it hasn’t. He has thought of nothing else in the past few weeks. Sho – Mai – the whole predicament. It’s kept him up night after night, unable to shake his creeping anxiety. The truth is he had not thought of the Sakurais in many years. They had become distance memories, so distance they might have been nothing but the work of fiction. And now, faced with them here, he realizes that it is not just his father who will be hurt by his rejection of marriage. Now, meeting Sho again, meeting Mai again, he feels like an inevitable villain.

Nino’s eyes pop open. “Are you really so worried about it?” he asks and there’s something wary in his inquisitiveness.

Ohno isn’t sure how to explain it. “She’s – nice,” he settles on saying. “I don’t want to cause her any pain. What if she’s truly hurt by it?” His fingers stop moving against Nino’s skin. “What if she never recovers?”

Nino has no answer for him, but for the briefest of moments as Ohno looks down on him, there’s a shadow in his eyes, dark and unreadable. For the first time, in a long time, Ohno does not entirely understand what he could be thinking.

“You read far too much Jane Austen,” Nino says, his tone becoming suddenly irritable.

He clambers up ungracefully from Ohno’s lap and, without another word, heads in the direction of his phonograph. It’s electric – Ohno had bought it himself as a present for Nino’s graduation. At the time, Nino had been speechless in the face of its sentiment and expense. Now Ohno wonders if Nino has put the pieces together – for Ohno, and his father’s allowance, it had been of no expense at all. It had been nothing but the deepest of sentiment. To Nino, Ohno wonders, does that make it worth more or less?

Nino has his back to Ohno, but Ohno knows he’s put the record on when the soft croon of Marion Harris begins to fill the room, along with the distinct sound of Nino humming along. Ohno can’t help but recognize the song, although every time he hears it he wonders that its still knowable, the record still playable, with the number of times Nino must have listened to it since its purchase.

Ohno knows better than to interrupt while the record is playing. He waits patiently until its finished, and when it finally is, Nino turns back to him again. There is no longer a trace of his earlier disgruntlement visible.

He returns to Ohno’s side. He picks up the book, forgotten on the bed. He hands it back to Ohno before settling himself very purposely into his former position in Ohno’s lap.

“Next chapter,” he instructs and closes his eyes.

Ohno’s not sure what to make of this behavior, but in a way it’s nostalgic too. Nino has always had his moods and he just as easily frees himself from them without Ohno’s interference. Besides he’s right, Ohno does read too much Jane Austen, and it’s not the first time Nino has scolded him for it. Ohno decided not to worry about him – not when there’s so much else to keep him up at night. In any case, the best thing to be done, is to do as Nino commands.

So he opens the book and reads.


	2. Chapter 2

The Sakurai Country House is a two-hour journey from London. Ohno and Nino take the afternoon train together from Victoria Station with an assurance from Sho that they will be met at the other side.

“They have a chauffeur, I’m sure,” Nino muses, the only thing he says for almost the entire ride. 

For all Ohno’s anxiety, inexplicably it’s Nino who seems the more nervous of the two as they settle themselves into a private compartment that Nino had insisted Ohno purchase for them with some of his expansive wealth (“This is why I didn’t tell you,” Ohno mumbles crankily as Nino commandeers his wallet at the ticket counter.) 

Nino spends the journey with his face towards the window, one hand stuck deep into the pocket of Ohno’s coat. It would be unsettling, as Nino's silences have always been to Ohno, if Ohno himself was not so deeply immersed in his own uneasiness. 

They arrive on time at the station. Nino is already looking a little worse for wear as he blinks into the sudden daylight, brighter than usual as it reflects off the landscape of snow before them. Ohno meanwhile is acutely sorry for the loss of his pocket companion, feeling more and more, with every breath of chilled country air, like this has been a terrible mistake.

A shout draws their attention to the roadway on the other side of the tracks.

“Gentlemen! This way!”

They turn to find Sho, waving wholeheartedly to them from the front seat of an exquisite red motorcar – the kind that Ohno has only ever seen in photographs and moving pictures. The retractable top is down and sitting quietly in the seat beside her brother is Mai. She nods in greeting, revealing the large pair of fashionable-looking sunglasses perched on the top of her scarf-covered head. It’s not until they begin to approach to vehicle that it occurs to Ohno that Sho is sitting in the passengers seat – Mai is driving. 

“Blimey,” murmurs Nino, clearly impressed.

“Right on time,” Sho says happily as he jumps down from the car, ushering them forward and loading their luggage into the boot himself, all the while happily inquiring about their journey and extolling them for their goodness in making the visit.

As usual, Mai remains graciously silent for the entirety of her brother's speeches. When he's finally worn himself out, and Ohno and Nino have clambered into the backseat, she pulls her sunglasses down over her eyes and smiles at them in the rearview mirror. 

“Let’s go,” she says and starts the ignition.

*

A quarter of an hour of bumpy country road later finds Nino vomiting on the grand and very frozen front lawn of the Sakurai Country House.

“I’m so terribly sorry, Ninomiya-san,” Mai is saying again for the fifteenth time since their arrival, her back still to them as she speaks with utmost sincerity. “I should have taken it more slowly.”

Ohno is standing beside Nino and attempting to rub his back, despite the fact that Nino has smacked his hand away several times already. After a final retch, Nino lifts himself unsteadily upright. He dabs his mouth with the polka-dotted handkerchief Ohno holds out to him, having fumbled it from Nino's jacket pocket at the first sign of trouble.

“Please,” he says to Mai’s back. “Call me Kazunari. Our level of intimacy has gone far beyond formalities now that I’ve vomited at your feet.”

Mai puts a hand over her mouth, clearly stifling a laugh. “Kazunari-kun then,” she says. “Please let me go check that my brother has indeed found the maid to bring you a glass of water.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, but quickly takes off into the house’s imposing front entrance. 

“Off to a good start,” Nino mumbles loud enough for Ohno to hear.

Ohno can’t help but grin as he places Nino’s bowler back on his head. It had been quite a scene, Sho instantly working himself into an almost hysteria the moment Nino had doubled-over, and sprinting into the house in search of assistance even before Ohno could tell him that Nino wouldn’t like the fuss. Mai had turned away, more likely out of courtesy than horror Ohno had thought, as she in fact had seemed considerably fascinated with the entire episode – in all probability, as Nino would aptly point out later, being a lady of high society, she had never seen anyone vomit before.

“Don’t look at me so fondly after I’ve just been sick, you wretched man,” Nino whines, face pale but regaining some colour now that he’s once again standing.

Ohno laughs. “I can’t help it.”

Nino looks as if he’d like to laugh too, but instead he scowls. Ohno knows that look well enough to dodge just as Nino’s hand comes up to cuff him on the back of the head.

“Come then,” Nino says, with an endeared huff. He reaches up to straighten his hat. “I need desperately to wash my mouth out.”

***

If nothing else, the rocky beginnings of the holiday break the tension that Ohno, and for all appearances Nino, has held since leaving London. Even Sho, once he’s assured himself of Nino’s complete well-being, has lost some of the manic edge to his cheerfulness, leaving only a tolerably good-mood suited much more to Ohno’s taste.

Mai, perhaps emboldened by having been asked to speak to Nino so familiarly, or perhaps by having been part of what she must find to be greatly exciting occurrences, is very much more animated than usual. She appears relieved, if not delighted, for their company.

“I’ve been stuck with only my brother for so very long,” she confides in a soft tone that verges on mischievous a few hours after their arrival, when Nino has pulled himself together and the memory of that earlier incidence is only a bad dream. “And although I adore him, he can be a bit…" She pauses for a moment to search for the word, then says, in English, "... _pedantic_.”

Nino laughs at that, covering his mouth with the inside of his elbow, and even if Ohno doesn't know the vocabulary, he is sure that it must be well-used to get that particular reaction.

Therefore they are all in high spirits as the day continues in accordance with what they find to be Sho’s meticulous schedule. First on the agenda is a grand tour. The house is very nearly colossal, with at least twenty palatial rooms, including two dining rooms, an enormous library and even a small study completely dedicated to those items from Sho’s collection of Egyptian artifacts that he had brought with him on this trip. Though Ohno had visited here once or twice before in the years that Sho had still attended school with him, he finds he has almost no memory of the place beyond a vague recollection of Sho’s secret pathway to the kitchen, which they often traversed on their quests for late night snacks.

“It’s a lovely house,” remarks Nino as Sho's very thorough showing comes to an end in a not so insignificant ballroom.

“Yes, it really is,” says Sho with a warm smile as he looks around. 

Ohno looks around too. Like most of the rooms, the ballroom is almost empty of furnishings, but beautifully so, with a sweeping expanse of shinning floor and large picturesque windows down one side. 

“It’s only since my return here that I’ve been struck by how painful it has been to be away from it for all these years,” Sho continues. “It is really too bad that it won’t be with us much longer. We’ll have it sold by the end of the year. This Christmas will be our last hurrah.”

Nino shoots a quizzical look in Ohno’s direction. Ohno can only shrug, equally confused by Sho’s words.

Sho is frowning, but he quickly recovers himself. “Perhaps we shall have at least one more dance in this place before we leave. If I recall correctly, Satoshi-kun dances very well.” He turns to Ohno and now he’s the one who sounds mischievous. “Do you dance still, Satoshi-kun?”

Ohno is unexpectedly flustered by the question. “I – ” he starts to reply.

“Of course he does,” Nino cuts in, and Ohno is sure he must be wholly improved since his previous malady with that sparkle to his eye. “In fact, he’s _always_ dancing.”

Mai claps her hands together, but when the other three turn to look at her, she seems bashful for it, as if she had no intention of drawing their attention. 

“Perhaps – ” she says, but she sounds unsure. She stops, then tries again. “Perhaps we could have a dance then. Just the four of us.”

“Mai,” Sho says. “That is a truly excellent idea! A Christmas dance! We can have it on Christmas Eve. Although, if it is only the four of us, we gentlemen will be very short of partners.”

“No matter,” Nino assures him, with such quick amicableness that it makes Ohno nervous. “We don’t mind that, do we, Oh-chan?”

Ohno has no choice but to nod his agreement.

“Then it’s all settled,” Sho says. “I do hope you've packed your dancing shoes, Satoshi-kun, as I very much look forward to seeing you and Mai cross the floor together.”

“Yes,” is all Ohno can manage, feeling hot in the face. He glances at Nino, but Nino is watching Mai with another unreadable expression.

Sho is oblivious to all of this, having in the interim marched across the room to throw the cover off a glittering black grand piano. “And for music, we have this.”

As if on cue, Nino’s attention snaps in that direction. 

“A piano!” he says, like a giddy child, and Ohno hasn't seen him this excited since he was made captain of the cricket team. “Oh-chan, look, a _piano_!”

“Haven’t you any pianos at Oxford?” Sho asks in surprise as Nino whizzes across the room to stand beside him.

“We have, of course we have, in the practice rooms and for performances. But nothing like this.” He gives a trill of boyish laughter. “It’s the 1910 Steinway Model O?”

“Yes,” says Sho. “Quite right. Do you play?”

“I do,” says Nino. He reaches towards the ivory keys, fingers twitching, then looks to Sho. “But never on anything so _expensive_. May I?”

“Please,” says Sho, stepping back. 

“Righto!” says Nino, needing no more prompting as he takes a seat at the bench and begins to play.

*** 

Ohno finds the door to the adjoining room unlocked when he carefully turns the knob. On the other side is Nino, already in bed, but not asleep. He’s sitting up against the headboard with his spectacles on and a book in his lap – one of Sho’s, Ohno guesses, as Nino had been so enthralled with the expansive Sakurai library that he was welcomed to borrow from it. He does not look up as Ohno shuffles quietly towards him.

“Nino,” Ohno says when he gets to the bed. Nino still doesn't look, but he scoots over, just enough to allow for Ohno to lie down beside him.

Ohno puts his head on Nino’s pillow, inhaling deeply from its creases the lavender scent that still follows Nino around after all these years, and tries to wait. But tonight his usual patience is nowhere to be found. There’s the thrum of something, under his skin, that he can’t ignore. He longs for Nino’s attention in that painful, agonizing way he does when Nino is miles away, though tonight he is right there, right beside him, close enough to touch.

“What is it?” Ohno asks, tapping lightly at the cluster of incomprehensible kanji on the cover of Nino’s book, and if it’s an abrupt burst of a question, Nino doesn’t let on that he’s noticed – although it’s certain that he has.

“Something Japanese, so you wouldn't know it anyway,” Nino says dryly, but as usual, he’s read the double meaning behind Ohno’s query. He always does, though that doesn't mean he always obliges it. This time he takes pity on Ohno. He closes his book and places it on the bedside table. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” he asks, primly.

“I couldn’t sleep,” is Ohno’s reply.

Nino catches the meaning of that too. He sighs, as if he’s put out, but Ohno doesn’t miss the soft edges of the smile he’s trying to stifle as he turns away to takes off his glasses and place them to the side with his forgotten book – and just that, just a glance of it, gives Ohno a surge of emotion so strong it's almost more than he can bear.

He leans in and Nino is already moving with him. They kiss, softly at first, quiet and unhurriedly. After so long apart, they've learned to pace themselves, to enjoy a build so intensely slow it makes Ohno’s stomach trip up against his rib cage with every movement.

“Our rooms – ” Nino says after a while, and already Ohno has become unable to keep track of the passage of time, has it been minutes or hours or days? “ – are rather far from the rest of the house.”

“Yes,” Ohno mumbles, with a hand in Nino’s hair as he kisses the side of his face.

“I’m sure –” continues Nino, and Ohno’s trying hard to keep listening, distracted by the warm familiar taste of Nino’s skin and the unusual little wave that’s worked itself into Nino’s damp hair. “ – not a thing could be heard from such a distance.”

“Not a thing,” Ohno agrees. His breath traces the soft curve of Nino’s jaw, and when Nino shivers, his fingers curl tightly against Nino's scalp of their own volition.

Nino jerks forward and Ohno can feel the way his lashes are fluttering desperately to stay open. He kisses Ohno’s ear, once, just a brush of lips, then whispers, “And it has been such an awfully long time.”

Ohno sees no need to reply to that. He kisses him again, knowing that as usual, Nino will be able to read his agreement there, in the press of his lips.

***

“You must at least speak to her,” Nino scolds, voice quiet as to keep them from being overheard. “You barely gave a glance in her direction at breakfast.”

“Mama taught me it’s rude to stare,” Ohno whispers back, although it’s completely unconvincing even to himself. “Besides I was busy staring at you.” 

This morning, the incredulous look Nino gives him is softer around the edges than usual, and it only serves to remind Ohno that they could be taking this mid-morning lull as an opportunity to go back upstairs. Instead, Nino is tugging harshly at the side of Ohno’s favourite blue jumper, trying to force him into the next room – a room that Ohno has no intention of entering. Nor can he fathom why Nino is so insistent on it. 

“She also taught you, I assume, to be a good houseguest. Honestly, Oh-chan, the intimate details of your upbringing continue to baffle me – was there ever a _botchan_ with such awful manners?” 

“I’m not a _botchan_ ,” Ohno says with a frown. “And I’d rather spend time speaking to you.”

Nino is oddly caught off guard by this reply, and for a moment at least, his lecture comes to an uncharacteristic halt. Now he’s the one staring, quite thoughtfully, at Ohno’s pouting lips. He even looks as if he might give in to Ohno’s requests – those spoken and unspoken. But before Ohno can entirely get his hopes up, Nino has shaken himself from whatever contemplation has taken him in. When he speaks again, it is with even more sternness than before.

“You’re meant to be playing along, remember? Now go speak to her before you’re revealed as the terrible fraud that you are.”

He gives Ohno an authoritative push, but Ohno stubbornly does not allow himself to be moved. For a few minutes, they tussle childishly right there in the middle of the hall. It’s a futile exertion, Ohno realizes with much annoyance – as in all other things, they are exceptionally well matched.

Finally, Ohno steps back and Nino grins triumphantly as he straightens the now rumpled front of his own jumper, which Ohno only just notices is also _his_ jumper, his second favourite that has somehow over the short course of their stay made it into Nino’s possession. 

He tries one more time. “We’ve nothing to talk to about.”

Nino’s grin widens, showing enough pink gum that Ohno is at once charmed and more wary than ever. 

“I do hate to disabuse you of that notion,” Nino says, with no attempt to mask any of his ample smugness, “but I suspect that you’ll soon find you have much more in common than you would like to believe.” 

While Ohno puzzles out the meaning of such a statement, Nino takes him by the elbow and pulls him closer to the open doorway. When Ohno only continues to look at him in confusion, Nino mimes opening a book, then jabs a thumb in the direction of Mai who is sitting alone at the far side of the room. 

Ohno blinks. Mai is indeed holding a book, but Ohno can’t imagine what about it would possibly have Nino in such a wound-up state. That is unless – 

“ _Ms. Austen_ ,” Nino mouths.

Ohno perks up despite himself, and as he does so, Nino takes the opportunity to push him forcefully over the threshold and into the room once and for all. Ohno feels himself stumbling in, the trajectory Nino has sent him on interrupted only when he trips over the carpet. He catches himself, regaining his balance just in time to keep from falling to the floor.

This entrance is more than enough to get Mai’s attention, and she looks up from her book in surprise.

“Pardon me,” says Ohno, utterly mortified. He looks to the doorway, but Nino has long-since disappeared – probably off to find Sho and pry from him more embarrassing information on Ohno’s youth, as he's seemed obsessed with doing since their introduction.

“Oh, it’s all right,” says Mai, a bit awkwardly. She closes her book, fingers curling uneasily against the cover. “Please feel free to have a seat.”

Ohno does sit, if only so he is no longer standing uncomfortably in the middle of the room. He chooses the chair farthest from her and perches himself on the very edge of it. 

For a long minute they sit in silence, both of them looking anywhere but at each other. 

_You’re meant to be playing along_ , Ohno thinks with a wince. He clears his throat, gently, but when he has Mai’s attention, he finds himself still at a loss for what to say. 

Then he remembers the book in her lap. “May – may I ask what you’re reading?”

Mai looks down at her book. She smiles. “ _Persuasion_ ,” she says.

*

“ _Really?_ ”

“Oh yes, until the age of 13, his finger was in his nose more often than not. It was only put to an end when Headmaster started rapping the back of his hand with the flat side of a ruler. Even then, it took half a year to break him of the habit. He’s surprisingly stubborn as I’m sure you – ”

Sho is only a few steps into the drawing room, Nino trailing right behind him, when he comes to an astonished stop.

“Goodness!” he exclaims, taking in the sight before him – Ohno and Mai, side by side, and speaking to each other with great liveliness.

“Now this is unexpected,” he says, and it’s only then that the two notice the presence of anyone else in the room.

“Sho,” says Mai, delightedly, “did you know that Satoshi-kun has read all of Jane Austen?” 

At the same time Ohno has turned to Nino – Nino who is looking just as bewildered as Sho. It’s as if he’d expected, over an hour later, to find the two sitting in opposite corners of the room and staring at the walls. To be entirely fair, they undoubtedly would have been if not for fact that they had each found themselves in the company of a fellow Janeite.

“Nino, she’s reading _Persuasion_ ,” Ohno tells him, forgetting for a moment that it’s Nino who has known from the start.

“Have you read it, Kazunari-kun?” Mai asks, her face lit up with a remarkable amount of enthusiasm that only serves to strengthen her resemblance to her older brother.

Nino gives a courteous shrug of his shoulders. “Not myself, no.”

But Mai barely acknowledges his response, already turning back to Ohno to ask earnestly, “And what do you make of Captain Wentworth in the end? Is it indeed true, like Captain Harville says, that a man can be so constant?”

Ohno, however, is lost to the conversation. He looks again in Nino’s direction, but Nino has moved across the room now to stare out the window, his hands twisted together behind his back in a way that makes Ohno’s stomach do an anxious little flip.

“How good it is to see the two of you getting along so well!” Sho is saying, somewhere in the background of the room. “Don’t you agree, Nino?”

Nino turns away from the window, a smile already fixed in place. To anyone but Ohno, he would appear perfectly content. But Ohno has long since learned to look past such smiles, to look further for hints of his true emotions – today it is Nino's eyes that give him away, a dull shade of black even in the bright afternoon light. 

“Quite,” he says to Sho, with almost seamless geniality, and returns his wavering gaze to the window.

***

For better or for worse, Nino’s previous words of encouragement turn out to be prophetic. Over the next few days, Ohno finds that he and Mai have many more mutual interests than perhaps even Nino could have supposed. Mai speaks excellent French and, after her brother returned from England, had become an avid croquet player. By the end of the week, Ohno can only be sorry he’d ever tried to avoid her.

“Nino, come join us!” Ohno shouts from the lawn where he and Mai have started a frightfully chilly croquet match.

Nino shakes his head, looking pink-cheeked with the cold even from the doorstep. “No thank you,” he says. “I’ve promised Sho-san a game of Reversi before tea.”

Ohno frowns, ready to argue that Nino has played Reversi twice today already, when Mai calls out to him.

“Satoshi-kun, c'est à votre tour!”

It had taken all of a morning for Ohno and Mai to dig the croquet field out from the snowy landscape beside the house, but that time had passed remarkably quickly while they’d conversed together. Ohno had forgotten that Sho’s little sister had played a rather permanent fixture in his childhood, and her recollection of the past and present antics of their entire Tokyo neighborhood had been a welcomed delight to him. In the end, such hard labour as shoveling had becomes quite an enjoyable task.

Ohno had never expected to _like_ Mai, but that is surely the appropriate sentiment to describe his feelings for her.

He finds his ball easily in the frozen remains of the grass, and with little hesitation except for a puffing exhale which at once crystallizes in the air before him, he taps it precisely through the closest hoop. 

“Très bien fait!” Mai cheers.

When Ohno finally tears himself away from the game long enough to look back towards the house, the doorway is empty.

Nino is already gone.

*

After five rounds of croquet, Ohno can barely feel his fingers or toes. However, Mai’s pout of defeat makes the cold he’s bound to have caught well worth it. It’s one thing to win against someone like Nino, who has never much liked the sport nor taken it seriously. It is another thing entirely to win against someone who loves to play as much as he himself does. Needless to say, the triumph has put Ohno in an excellent mood as he and Mai enter into the drawing room together.

It is there that they find Nino and Sho sitting at their usual card table, the now familiar set of Reversi spread out before them. 

“I would inquire as to the victor, but I can clearly see it by my sister’s face,” says Sho as Mai scowls at him from across the room, crossing her arms over the front of her orange sweater-shirt, its knotted necktie thrown askew with her annoyance.

“A gentleman would have let me win,” she complains, though she’s clearly trying not to smile. “Luckily, Satoshi-kun is no gentleman, n'est-ce pas, Satoshi-kun?”

Now Ohno is the one to scowl, though when Mai begins to laugh at him, he can’t help but join her in it. Soon both of them have succumb to a fit of giggles, which ends only when Mai reaches up to knock Ohno on the back of the head with the palm of her still-gloved hand. 

“And what is the running score?” Sho asks, watching over their antics with no little amount of amusement. 

“Two to three to Satoshi-kun,” Mai says with a heavy sigh. “Now I’m simply famished. What time is it?”

Faced with his favourite question, Sho reaches hastily into the inside of his jacket, pulling out his gold hieroglyphic-engraved pocket watch to provide an answer. “Half past four already.”

“Oh dear!” Mai says in alarm. “Is it really that late? I suppose I must get changed for tea.”

“I’ll walk upstairs with you,” says Sho, rising from the card table. “Nino, I hope we can finish our game this evening?”

“Of course,” says Nino amiably, and though it's the first time he’s spoken since Ohno and Mai have entered the room, only Ohno seems to notice. 

The siblings take their leave. When the door closes behind them, Nino finally stands from his seat. 

“You seemed to enjoy yourself,” he says, eyes downcast as he carefully pushes in his chair.

“You were right,” Ohno tells him, still a little breathless from laughter. “I like her.”

Nino pauses, one hand on the chair back. He does not look up. “Then maybe you should marry her,” he says in a voice Ohno has never heard him use before, a voice devoid of any emotion. “At least we’d keep the money.”

As soon as the words have left his mouth, Nino is moving swiftly towards the exit. Ohno can do nothing to stop him, frozen with bafflement as Nino opens the door, then closes it resolutely behind himself.

In a matter of moments, Ohno finds himself alone in an empty room, with nothing to do but wonder at how the sight of Nino turned away from him, of his retreating figure, has become so awfully familiar.

***

_Maybe you should marry her._

That night, Ohno cannot sleep. He hasn’t bothered going to Nino’s room tonight – he can tell through the crack beneath the adjoining door that the light on the other side has long since been put out.

With no where else to go, Ohno wanders out into the quiet house, the dark corridors some comfort to him and his growing turmoil. 

_At least we’d keep the money._

Ohno has always known that Nino’s childhood was not like his. At school, the allowance cheques from Nino’s parents had all the time been few and far between. Although his father was, even by Mr. Sumimoto’s account, respected in his profession, that respect apparently did not translate into any kind of significant wealth. Nino often spoke of wanting something instead of having it, of saving for something instead of purchasing it. He was not destitute by any means – an expensive English education aside, much of his clothing and personal belongings were of a higher quality than Ohno’s. He had even grown up with a piano in the house, though not at Steinway. But there was no denying that Nino was certainly naturally, and often cheerfully, stingy. Ohno had always rather liked that quality, as he in his own way was stingy too – rarely did he spend, and rarely did he foot a bill if he could avoid it. Therefore, money – except during good-natured arguments of whom was treating whom during their infrequent outings together – had never been much spoken of between them.

Now, of course, Ohno wonders if he’s underestimated Nino’s appreciation of wealth all this time. Nino’s expression when he’d caught hold of Ohno’s allowance cheque had been nothing short of pure exultation, Ohno reminds himself. And since they’ve arrived at the Sakurai House, money and expense has become an almost endless topic. So far, Nino has spent every evening ticking off the elaborate items he’s seen among the furnishings that day and asking Ohno if he can possibly fathom what the prices might be. 

Perhaps, these have been more than innocent conversation topics. Perhaps, they have been hints. Perhaps, Nino greatly desires the fortune that Ohno has been so determined to give up.

It’s not that the money matters either way to Ohno. Regardless of his intention of spending, he cannot say that he particularly minds having it. It’s only that the expectations that come attached to it have been wrong from the start. To give it up, along with those expectations, has always been his plan. But in doing so, he may have placed his own impossible expectations on Nino. Ohno has had a lifetime to adjust himself to the idea of “writing off so very many zeros” and all that it will mean. Nino had only minutes to have found his way into a fortune and then been told he must forsake it. It may not have been in him – or any reasonable individual – to come along to Ohno’s way of thinking over such a short amount of time. 

Still, Ohno had thought, with a looming marriage as the crux of the arrangement – how could Nino possibly want such a thing? 

But then, hadn’t Nino said exactly what he thought of it, from their very first meeting with Mai?

_If you married her, I could be your secret lover. I would do it. For the money._

Ohno blinks, not sure how long he has been here in the empty ballroom. This late at night, the luxurious expanse of windows fill the room with moonlight, giving every surface an unearthly glow. Ohno finds himself standing before them, transfixed.

When Nino had said it, all those weeks ago, Ohno had been sure it was nothing more than a joke. But maybe – 

Maybe Ohno is being foolish, is being as stubborn, as he has all his life been accused of being. Maybe he is the one who is wrong in his way of thinking. Such thinking, he reminds himself, such foolishness, had almost lost him Nino once before.

And Nino, through his strange behavior of late, has been trying to show him this all along. Accepting the invitation to come here. Encouraging him, pushing him, into Mai’s company. Reminding him what kind of life they could live if only – 

If only he marries.

“What are you thinking of?” Nino asks, and Ohno is not entirely surprised to find him standing there, just behind him, wide-awake in his stripped pajamas.

It’s started to snow now – huge, soft flakes that flutter unhurriedly to the ground. 

Through the window, Ohno watches them. “Remember when they took you out in the snow?”

Normally, Nino would come closer. He would hook his chin on to Ohno’s shoulder, press himself against Ohno’s back from head to toe, and breathe too heavily into Ohno’s ear in the hopes of making himself bothersome. 

Tonight, he keeps his distance.

“Of course,” he answers, easily. “You saved my life.”

Ohno shakes his head. “They wouldn’t have killed you.”

Nino steps up beside him, but carefully, so that he remains no closer than before, and Ohno feels it acutely. 

“Yes,” he agrees, and his voice, unexpectedly, is barely a whisper as he continues, “but I thought at the time that I wanted them to. I didn’t think then that I could live after I’d lost you.”

There is a long pause. Ohno does not look away from the falling snow. He may be foolish, but not foolish enough to speak, to interrupt, as Nino takes a deep, shaky breath in the space between them.

“But you saved me,” Nino says. “And then even more miraculously, you said that you felt for me the way I felt – had always felt – for you. Do you know that I truly believed that I could never love anyone more than I loved you then, on that day?”

He pauses and in the reflection of the windows, Ohno can just make out his expression – the soft smile he smiles to himself, the faraway sheen of his eyes.

“Only I was young and foolish then, and full up with your romantic ideals. Because I was wrong. Every morning when I wake, whether you’re there with me or not, I love you more than I did the day before.”

Ohno turns to look then, and the moonlight shows in entirety the bewildered look on Nino’s face, the way he can’t quite believe the words himself, even as he says them. He looks so very young – and he is young, Ohno thinks. Older than the day they met, but still the same scared boy who had been so devastated when Ohno had pushed him away, pushed him away because of his own foolishness.

In that moment, Ohno knows he would do anything to make Nino happy. Even for the money. Even if he has to marry someone else. 

It’s then that Nino snaps suddenly back from whatever distant remembrance has captured him. When he sees the way Ohno is staring at him, his expression quickly transforms itself to one of extreme mortification. Ohno is certain that he hadn’t meant to say any of those words aloud. Now, finding himself to have revealed the most inner mechanisms of his affections, he is thoroughly, perhaps irreparably, embarrassed.

Ohno’s heart has never been so full.

He reaches for him and Nino flinches, as if he would run, as if he would flee. But Ohno does not allow Nino to turn away from him this time. He catches Nino’s hand in his own and pulls with the full power of his strength. If Nino tries to resist at first, it is only a handful of moments before he cannot fight it anymore, before he gives in and let’s himself be moved.

Ohno pulls him into a crushing embrace, holds him so close he’s sure than neither of them can breathe.

“Je t’aime,” Ohno whispers and he feels Nino smile against his skin.

There’s no phonograph here, so when they start to sway together, cheek to cheek, there is no real music to lead them. It doesn’t matter to them. Ohno’s hold loosens, but only a little. Nino’s arms slip around his waist. After a while, he starts to hum, although what song Ohno can't make out.

“Will you play croquet with us tomorrow?” Ohno asks a long time later.

He feels the distasteful furrow of Nino’s brow against the side of his own. “You will have Mai to play with.”

“But you’ll play?” Ohno asks again. “With me?”

“Very well,” Nino says, and his head drops to Ohno’s shoulder, tucks beneath Ohno’s chin. “But don’t think I’ll let you win as Mai has been doing.”

“Mai doesn’t let me win!” Ohno says indignantly, though his irritation is ill-served by the grin he is unable to suppress.

“I’ll play,” Nino agrees with a sigh that would sound put-upon to anyone else, anyone but Ohno. 

_I would do it. For the money._

I would do it, Ohno thinks. For you.

Nino starts to hum again. 

Somehow, Ohno's heart feels even fuller in this moment than the one before.


	3. Chapter 3

The dance is a grand affair, even if it’s only just for the four of them.

“A last hurrah,” Sho reminds them as he opens the door to the ballroom to reveal an overwhelming scenery of decorations.

Mai gives a giddy laugh, and Ohno can hardly blame her, feeling a bit giddy himself as they all take in the sight before them. The entire room has been done up in a full English Christmas style with no expense spared. Wreaths and garlands, holly and mistletoe, cover every wall and surface, and red and green baubles glow in the light of countless candles. Standing before the row of darkened windows is an enormous fir tree, laid so thick with tinsel than it glimmers with a life of its own. 

From beside him, Ohno feels the excited brush of Nino’s fingers against the back of his hand, a sign that Nino too is thrilled with such a display.

“Merry Christmas!” Sho says, clearly pleased with himself, even more pleased with the stunned looks on their faces, and most pleased of all by the smacking kiss that Mai places on his cheek in speechless thanks.

To one side of the room there is a spread of food and drink enough for five times their party, while the very center of the gleaming wood floor has been left empty for dancing. As Sho can play piano almost as well as Nino, the two take turns providing the evening’s musical accompaniment. A polka, a waltz, a foxtrot or two. Nino plays “Japanese Moon” three times in a row at Mai’s request. 

Even Ohno can’t help but notice that Mai looks very lovely tonight, in a sleeveless gown of plum-coloured velvet that is covered in delicate beading matching exactly to her headband. Ohno has plenty of time to admire this outfit up close as they spend song after song together on the dance floor. To begin with, Mai is gracious enough to partner with each of them in turn. But as Sho and Nino become more engrossed with the musical selection, Ohno finds Mai and himself a constant pair. It's strange for him to be the lead for so many turns around the floor. Usually by this point, Nino will have started complaining, started purposefully stepping on Ohno’s toes until he has no choice but to relent the position to him.

If Ohno – _once_ Ohno marries, he wonders when again he’ll have the chance to hear such complaints, to suffer from such sore toes? Surely not as often as he has nor so much as he would want.

“You look very well together!” Sho remarks as Ohno and Mai spin past him.

No sooner have the words left his mouth then across the room, a surprisingly dissonant chord rings out from the piano.

“So sorry, I lost my place,” Nino says, head down and expression hidden as he fumbles to start the song again.

It’s not very long after when Mai finally, inevitably, begs mercy. “Please, I must sit down or I’ll drop from exhaustion!”

Sho is at the piano and at her words he lets out a sound of disappointment. “Are you sure, Mai? Not just one more? Only I was going to play another polka,” he says a bit forlornly.

Ohno glances over to the refreshment table – to Nino, looking dapper in his best dark blue dinner jacket and loudly-coloured necktie. Although Ohno has been dancing all this time, Nino’s activities have not escaped his notice. For the past quarter of an hour, Ohno has been watching the subtle way he’s been dismantling cucumber sandwiches when he thinks no one is paying attention. Now he looks up from this self-employment and catches Ohno’s eye.

He smiles, and puts down his bread-filled plate.

“Play,” he calls to Sho as he steps onto the dance floor.

They've all had some to drink already, so when Nino holds out his hand to Ohno it’s met with jolly laughter all around.

“Shall we?” he asks with a grin that Ohno can’t help but mirror.  
They move out to take position in the center of the empty floor.  
“You’ve been staring at me,” Nino hums quietly as he directs Ohno’s hand to his shoulder.

“Your pocket is full of cucumbers,” is Ohno’s amused reply.

Nino’s mouth quirks to one side as he gives Ohno’s toes a warning crush with the tip of his polished shoe. “If you behave yourself, I may be persuaded to share.”

Ohno starts laughing and doesn’t stop as the music starts. The song is a rollicking one, which Sho plays with great relish. Ohno is quickly breathless as they whirl around and around, the room melting into nothing more than a glittering blur. Nino’s smiling is glittering too, brighter than anything else. 

When the song finishes, Ohno is still laughing. Nino is laughing too.

Ohno wants to kiss him.

The laughter stops. Nino gives a gentle shove to Ohno’s chest and it's only then that Ohno realizes how very close they’ve gotten, almost nose-to-nose.

“I feel quite dizzy after that one,” Nino says in a voice too loud. 

He looks in Sho and Mai’s direction and Ohno follows his gaze, but if either of them have noticed anything untoward, they don’t show it. Both of them are applauding generously.

Ohno turns back to Nino, but Nino is already moving away from him, heading hastily towards the piano. “Shall we have another brother and sister dance next?”

*

When they can dance no more, their party adjourns to the drawing room for more drinks and some much needed respite.

“This has been a wonderful evening,” Mai says as she collapses in a nearby seat. “Thank you so much, Sho. Truly, it was a dream come true!”

“It was my pleasure,” Sho says, the silly grin he’s been wearing for most of the evening beginning to grow weary around the edges.

He takes a seat across from Mai, then promptly stands again, pulling Mai’s copy of _Persuasion_ out from underneath him. As he does so, something comes fluttering out from between the pages.

“Oh! Sho! Don’t!” Mai says in sudden distress as she rushes forward to grab the papers that Sho has already bent down to collect. Ohno, who is sitting in the chair beside him, helpfully does the same.

As Mai continues to scramble with panic, Ohno peeks curiously at the papers in his hand. The writing is in Japanese and although the penmanship is neat and precise, much of the kanji is outside of the realm of Ohno’s inadequate vocabulary. Therefore he can only make out a few words here and in between.  


  
_Darling Mai –_

_I – long to hold you,_

_– to kiss –_

_– as I have – dreaming of you –_

_– your lips – since we were reunited –_

_– when we will be married –_

Ohno stops reading, embarrassed. When he looks up, the shocked expression painted across Sho’s face is more than enough to assume that the pages he is holding are much the same in content.

“Mai, what is the meaning of this?” Sho asks, looking pale.

Mai is clearly at a loss for what to do, her mouth moving wordlessly.

“Mai,” Sho says again, with more urgency. “Is this a love letter?”

Nino, who has been quietly trying to follow the drama so quickly unfolding around him, gives Ohno a questioning stare, but Ohno can look back helplessly in answer.

Mai has still not replied to her brother’s questions, though with every passing moment Sho has more and more to ask of her. 

“Who wrote this to you? Who is – ” He checks the letter he’s still holding, searching for a signature. “Who is _J_?”

Mai is on the verge of tears, all her happiness from a moment ago vanished. Her face is a mask of turmoil as she turns away from her brother, turns towards Ohno with a look of devastation Ohno has seen only once before in his life. 

It is a look he had promised himself he would never see again.

“I am,” he says.

“Satoshi-kun?” Sho says in awe and now Mai looks even more shocked than he does.

“I wrote it,” Ohno tells him.

He points with a surprisingly steady finger to the elegantly signed English letter at the bottom of the paper in Sho’s hand – out of place, but very distinct among the sea of Japanese words around it.

“It’s – it’s not a _J_. It’s an _S_ ,” he says, and the sound of the words coming out of his mouth are as astonishing to him as to everyone else. “I – apologise for being forward but I – ” 

His eyes flit quickly to Nino as he struggles to continue. Nino’s face is entirely blank. 

“I d-deeply care for your sister and I could not – contain myself?”

He stops there, intensely aware that his declaration has come out resembling more of a question than it should. The room is bathed in a cold silence. Somewhere a clock is ticking, far too loudly. Ohno feels himself very close to vomiting.

“I see,” Sho says finally. “I must admit I had no idea you felt so strongly for each other. But this – ” He takes a deep and steadying breath. “This is wonderful news!”

There’s a unsettling noise from Mai, something caught between a sob and a laugh, and she looks close to fainting as Sho reaches forward to warmly shake a flummoxed Ohno’s hand.

“Even so,” Sho says, letting Ohno go only in order to neatly arrange the papers he is holding and graciously return them to their now-revealed sender. “I think it is hardly appropriate for you to be sending such _descriptive_ correspondences to an unattached young lady. I’m afraid I have to insist that you make your relationship official, as soon as possible, if it is to be of such a level of intimacy.”

Ohno swallows, and nods. If his heart is still beating in his chest, he can no longer feel it. “I understand,” he says softly.

Of course he hadn’t planned for this yet, for it to happen so soon. He had hoped, and last night he had even prayed, that he would have at least until the spring. But if it was inevitable, if it was inescapable, if it is what he had to do for –

Ohno wonders what Nino’s expression is, what Nino is thinking, but he cannot bear to look – must not look, if he is to go through with it.

Mai is staring at him with complete bewilderment. He rises from his chair and kneels at her feet, the way he’s seen done in the illustrations of so many of his romantic novels.

“Sakurai Mai, will you marry me?”

***

Nino is drinking too much. 

It starts at dinner. In honor of an unexpected engagement, an equally unexpected engagement party must be held. Sho has insisted on calling for champagne, along with the usual table wine, and Nino drinks both in rapid succession. Then four glasses more, alternating between them.

Ohno has seen Nino drunk before. Certainly they’ve been drunk together many times, playing croquet in empty hallways during school holidays and crashing their bicycles into ditches on the college lawn. 

But tonight it’s different. Tonight, it’s startling. Nino drinks like a man dying of thirst – or dying of something else, something much more painful.

In the dining room, no one but Ohno seems to notice as Nino’s face begins to glow red, his words to slur around the edges when he can be coaxed into saying anything at all. Sho is too excited by the revelry of the engagement to pay any attention but to his sister, and Mai is so busy cowering under her brother’s enthusiasm that she doesn’t see a thing.

Ohno tries several times, in between his fumbled answers to those of Sho’s inquiries posed in his direction, to catch Nino’s eye. But Nino, for perhaps the first time in their entire acquaintance, gets through an entire meal without even a glance in Ohno’s direction. 

It’s not until dinner is over that Ohno can attempt to step in. Nino is getting unsteadily to his feet when Sho suggests they break out one of his father’s best bottles of sherry for an after dinner toast to the happy couple.

“Sho-kun,” Ohno interrupts. 

Sho looks to him then, expectantly, and Ohno realizes he has no idea what to say next. Across the table, Nino sways slightly in his place. 

“Sho,” Mai says, tugging at her brother’s arm. “Perhaps we’ve done enough celebrating for tonight. Our guests are tired and, I’m sure, only too polite to tell you. Let’s leave the rest for tomorrow.” 

“Oh, well, I suppose,” Sho replies with a puzzled tone, obviously tipsy himself.

“We’ll say goodnight then,” says Mai, patiently. Her glance moves in Nino’s direction, then quickly away, as she steers Sho towards the exit.

“Goodnight,” Sho calls over his shoulder as Mai leads him away.

Nino does not look at Ohno once on their entire journey back to their rooms. Ohno stays a step behind him all the way there, watching quietly as Nino stumbles along.

When they arrive at their destination, Nino stops in front of the door to Ohno’s room and waits for Ohno to catch up with him. Ohno hesitates, unsure if Nino knows he’s at the wrong door.

Nino makes no sign of moving on and Ohno decides it is better, safer, not to ask. He opens the bedroom door, then nearly falls through it as Nino pushes him roughly inside.

“Kiss me,” Nino demands in a hot slur, clasping Ohno’s shirtfront with both hands and tugging him closer.

“Kazu,” Ohno says, but he obliges – gently, much more gently than Nino seems tolerant of. 

“Is that how engaged men kiss?” he growls. “I’d hate to know how they kiss after they’re married.”

“Kazu,” Ohno says again, increasingly concerned by Nino’s disturbing behavior. “What’s wrong?”

Nino laughs then and it sounds on the edge of hysteria. “You’re engaged!”

Ohno blinks in surprise. “You can’t really be so angry about that,” he says. “You know I only did it to help her. And – and for you. For the money.”

“What money?” Nino grumbles with disinterest, pulling away to move towards the bed on still wobbling feet. 

Ohno is not unused to the feeling of confusion. He has often been told he is unaware of the things going on around him, and not just because of whatever language is being spoken. This is not even the first time he’s been so confused by Nino, who is perhaps the most perplexing individual Ohno has ever met. Confusion has been a constant in Ohno’s life with Nino, and he has been happy to accept it. But now, at Nino’s words, Ohno feels as if he’s drowning.

“I did it for you,” he sputters, but it’s impossible to tell if Nino is even listening as he collapses – as he crumbles – to the bed.

Ohno feels as if he might crumble too. “I don’t want to marry her. Not at all,” he says with dismay.

“Don’t you?” Nino asks. He frowns, hard enough that he goes almost cross-eyed with the force of it. Ohno would find it endearing if he wasn’t so desperately floundering – trying to replay everything that has happened in the past few weeks, the past few days, the past few hours. 

What has he done?

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” Ohno tries to say.

He’s cut short when Nino starts to speak again, though his voice is nothing more than a heartbreaking whisper.

“I’ve no one else but you.” 

He wipes the sleeve of his jacket over his mouth, and he looks as if he might be sick, his face having taken on a worryingly green hue. 

“If you leave me, what shall I do?”

Ohno is beside him in a moment, next to him on the bed, and there is only a heartbeat of hesitation before Nino slumps against him. His head slides into Ohno’s lap and Ohno’s hand comes up of its own accord to pet through Nino’s slightly sweaty hair, to brush his fingers gently across Nino’s closed eyelids. Soon Nino’s breathing is quieting, is evening out.

Ohno is not nearly so soothed as his hand continues to move, automatically, through Nino’s hair. He’s not sure how much time has passed before his thoughts have eased their spinning enough for him to form words to speak again. 

“You don’t care about the money?” he asks Nino, despairingly. 

Nino does not answer. He is already asleep.

***

Ohno stops in the doorway and takes a moment to catch his breath. 

When he’d woken this morning to find Nino gone, with the adjoining bedroom empty too, he had assumed the very worst. He’d checked the house from top to bottom, every place that he could think of, every place he could without waking the entire household. It wasn’t until he’d stopped to rest on the second floor landing that he’d thought to look out the window. 

And there had been Nino standing in the back garden, shovel in hand, digging the croquet field out from under last night’s generous snowfall.

“You’re still here,” Ohno says when Nino finally notices him. 

Nino gives a tired smile. He’s wearing Ohno’s wool coat thrown over his pajamas and there are dark circles under his eyes. 

“Did you think I’d left, _botchan_?” he teases and it’s clear that he’s more than a little hung-over, more than a little worse for wear.

Ohno doesn’t bother denying such a charge. 

“I did consider it,” says Nino. “But it is an awfully long trip back to Oxford.”

His smile ripples dangerously across his face. He puts down the shovel and rubs his hands together a few times to warm them before stuffing them into the coat pockets. 

“You said last night you didn’t want to marry her?” he asks, face downturned but voice painfully, unmistakably, hopeful. “That it was a misunderstanding?”

“I don’t want to marry her,” Ohno assures him sincerely, grateful for a chance to say something, say anything, to make things clear.

When Nino stays silent, Ohno continues, “Can you really doubt that I have always been – will always be – devoted to you?”

Nino looks up then, meets Ohno’s eyes and gazes into them for a long moment. Ohno looks back steadfastly. Finally, Nino gives an annoyed huff – and even before he speaks Ohno is assured of his answer. 

“No, I can’t,” Nino says, a relieved smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Though you’ve certainly a strange way of showing it.”

He takes a seat on the cold porch step before adding a bit more confidently, “But then I don't suppose that you would want to marry her – she isn’t your type.”

“She isn’t,” Ohno agrees. 

He takes a seat beside Nino, close enough that they’re touching shoulder to knee. Nino doesn’t move away.

“I’m sorry,” Ohno says to him.

Nino sighs, hides his face in his hands. “Don’t apologise. I’ve no one to blame but myself.”

He lets his hands slide away and they come to fidget nervously in his lap. Ohno watches them, tries not to wish so selfishly for Nino to reach out to touch him.

“I’ll admit,” Nino says, “that I accepted our invitation to come here because I thought the entire situation was amusing – a _botchan_ Oh-chan recommends himself to quite some entertainment.” 

He gives a droll smile, though it proves to be fleeting.

“And I was curious – curious about this history you’ve never mentioned to me. Your family, your money. About whether there are other things you’ve not told me. I wondered what other secrets would come out.”

“I have no secrets from you,” Ohno insists.

“You do,” Nino corrects, firmly. “You have. And I’ve never asked you to share them. Every few months, you would disappear to London. I told myself not to worry over it. That I was lucky enough to have you, and I shouldn’t ruin it by prying when you so clearly did not want me to. I’d almost lost you before, you may recall, by overstepping my bounds. But then Mr. Sumimoto appeared and Sho-kun and Mai and I wondered – well, one can very easily spiral into unthinkable thoughts when left to one’s own devices.”

“I told you I don’t want to marry her,” says Ohno, with all of his heart. “It was all a mistake.”

Nino reaches out then, at last, and sweeps Ohno’s bangs across his forehead with the frigid tips of his fingers. It’s a flimsy excuse for contact, and Ohno doesn’t think he’s ever been so glad for anything.

“But perhaps you should. You’re perfect for each other, and it would work – a marriage between you. You’re obviously becoming fond of her. You might even learn to love her after a time. And besides – ”

He swallows, his hand moving down to press against Ohno’s cheek. 

“ – it scares me. If you don’t marry, if you stay with me, will there be a morning when you wake up and wish that you had gone along with it? That you had chosen her instead?”

Ohno reaches up to cover Nino’s hand with his own. “Never,” he says.

Nino shakes his head, implacable. “How can you be so sure? You’ve never known what’s best for you. What can I offer you, Satoshi? We can never be married and I – ”

“You are what’s best for me,” Ohno declares, vehemently, and he doesn’t realize there are tears in his eyes until he feels them slipping down his cheeks.

“Are – are you crying?” Nino asks with a mix of shock and poorly disguised delight.

“No,” says Ohno, but it sounds more like a sob than anything else and his tears don’t stop falling. 

“There, there,” and Nino is really laughing at him now. “You’re the one who’s meant to be comforting me.”

“I thought you wanted me to marry her,” Ohno weeps.

Nino’s eyes are wide with disbelief, his mouth moving wordlessly until he finds his voice again. “ _Why ever would I want that?_ ”

“For the money,” Ohno sniffles pathetically. “I thought that you didn’t want me to give up the money. I was doing it for you.”

There’s a pause in which Nino seems to be completely stunned. Then he leans in and kisses Ohno with such ardency that Ohno feels as if he might faint from it.

“Idiot,” Nino says affectionately when he pulls back, wiping Ohno’s tears away with his fingers. “Idiot. I don’t give a damn about anything but you.”

“But you said so yourself,” says Ohno with complete helplessness, even as he presses into Nino’s touch.

“I didn’t _mean_ it. I was being spiteful and jealous – jealous of the time you’ve been spending with her.”

Ohno pouts. “You’re the one who forced me to do it.”

Nino laughs. “I did, didn’t I? Only I hadn’t expected you to get along so swimmingly. To ‘look so well together.’ After all, I had quite comfortably assumed that the only woman I should ever count as my rival was Jane Austen.” 

“I do love Jane Austen,” says Ohno and he laughs then too, though even he can hear that it’s a little thick, a little pitiful. “You really don’t care about the money?” he sniffs. 

“Of course not!” Nino says flippantly, then swiftly concedes, “Well, not terribly much. Did you really propose to her only on my account?”

“Yes,” Ohno says, nose wrinkling at the very thought that he might have done otherwise.

Nino has never looked quite so flattered. “Has anyone ever made such a romantic blunder as this?” he wonders under this breath.

He kisses Ohno again as if he can’t help himself. Ohno curls his fingers around Nino’s, still pressed against his cheek, and doesn’t let Nino pull away so soon this time. When they do part, Nino’s eyes are pleasantly out of focus. 

“Help me out of this mess,” Ohno pleads.

“Hmm.” Nino blinks a few times, as if waking himself from a delighted stupor. “I suppose I must since I’ve gotten you into it in the first place. Whatever would you do without me?”

Ohno moves Nino’s hand down to press over his chest, over his heart. 

“Nothing,” he says. “There’s no reason for anything without you.”

Nino flushes, clears his throat to cover the grin that is threatening to spill across his face. “You did the right thing, the noble thing for Mai. And we’ll find a way out of this whole sordid affair as long as you want one.”

“But how?” Ohno whines.

“I suspect,” says Nino, “that that letter you so chivalrously took credit for may be some help to us.”

He stands, shivering as he pulls his borrowed coat more closely around himself.

“Now come inside. I’m positively frozen. Your coat isn’t properly warm, you know, and I can’t begin to imagine how you live with it. Besides if you hurry, you’ve still time to take me back to bed and apologise to me properly.”

Ohno doesn’t have to be told twice. He leaps to his feet and rushes off into the house, Nino laughing giddily as he tries to keep up.

*

“Merry Christmas,” Nino says much later, as he pulls back from Ohno’s lips.

Ohno puts a hand into Nino’s already mussed hair. He’d almost forgotten, in the panic of this morning, that it was Christmas Day.

“Merry Christmas,” he says in return.

Nino shifts against him, pressing up on his elbows to look at Ohno, his mouth curled up mischievously. “Well then, where’s my present?”

They’ve been doing it for years now, this Christmas gift exchange. And though it’s silly, and both of them spend the rest of the year pretending to grumble about it, they haven’t ceased the tradition yet.

“Well,” Nino prompts again impatiently when Ohno does not immediately respond.

Ohno gestures towards the bedside stand and Nino clambers over him, hasty and ungraceful, to snatch the small box there. He makes quick work of the wrapping, throwing the lid carelessly across the bed as he eagerly peers into the contents.

“Is it wrong?” Ohno asks, feeling nervous as Nino stares silently at the collar pin gleaming in the bottom of the box. “I saw you admiring the one Sho-kun was wearing in London so I thought – ”

“It’s perfect,” Nino interrupts. He picks up the small bar, pressing it between his fingers. “It’s real gold?” he asks softly.

Ohno had hoped Nino might not notice, at least not so immediately. “Will you refuse to wear it if I say it is?”

“The way you flaunt your wealth is not at all becoming,” Nino replies dryly, though his eyes are a glittering, just like the pin in his hands.

“Only while I still have it,” says Ohno and Nino turns his face away to hide his pleased smile.

“My present?” Ohno prompts him hopefully.

Nino heaves a dramatic sigh. “You haven’t been at all good this year so I don’t know how you can expect to receive something,” he says even as he dangles a leg over the side of the bed to nudge a neatly wrapped package sitting at the foot of it.

Ohno leans over excitedly to retrieve it, wondering how long it’s been there – probably since yesterday though he hadn’t noticed it at all. It’s a large box and he unwraps it with his usual unhurried concentration, Nino draped against his back with his chin digging comfortably into Ohno’s shoulder.

“The two-tone is very fashionable right now,” Nino says when Ohno pulls out a shining new pair of brown and white wingtip Oxfords. “They quite suit you. Besides your old ones were in a shameful condition.”

Ohno turns his head to look at Nino, eyes wide. “Kazu,” he says.

Nino pulls back a little, suddenly bashful. “I suppose they aren’t solid gold but – ”

“Thank you,” Ohno says, gratefully.

Nino shrugs, but Ohno knows he's just deflecting again, as he always does. “It’s the least I can do if you keep insisting on being seen with me.”

*

Despite such sweet sentiments, Nino is too desperate for coffee to wait while Ohno struggles to lace up his new shoes. Consequently, Ohno is making his way to the breakfast room quite alone when he happens upon Sho in the front hall.

After so many dramatic occurrences in the past hours, Ohno has had little time to dread this moment of facing Sho again in the light of day. Now the full force of it hits him squarely, and along with it a heavy renewal of the guilt he has before now been too distracted to feel.

Luckily, Sho is speaking on the telephone. His shoulders are hunched, and from what Ohno can make out, he is speaking in a voice that is low and strained. Ohno tries to inch by without disturbing him, but despite best efforts, he cannot stop his new shoes clacking too loudly against the wood floor. It’s already too late. Sho puts the receiver gently back into its cradle at the same time that he notices Ohno standing a few feet down the hall. 

“Satoshi-kun, Merry Christmas,” he says, giving a fatigued smile. 

Ohno frowns. There is no doubt that Sho is at least as hung-over as Nino, but there’s something else, another shadow in his face that is entirely unrelated to alcohol.

“Is everything all right?” Ohno finds himself asking with honest concern.

Sho sighs. “I’ve had some news from Tokyo. His Imperial Majesty the Emperor has passed away.”

“Oh,” says Ohno, vaguely. It may be an unfitting moment to admit it, but it’s been so long since he’s been to Japan, he had forgotten about His Imperial Majesty almost completely. Even Nino has taken to hanging a picture of King George in his rooms, if only to be in line with his aspirations of facial hair.

“Unfortunately,” Sho continues, looking even more weary, “My father has insisted that I go immediately to the Embassy in London on his behalf during this time. I understand that you and Nino had planned to leave us tomorrow, but in light of recent events, would you be at all willing to keep Mai company until my return? It should be no more than a few days and I would be very comforted to know she was not alone here. Besides, now that the two of you are properly engaged,” and here he gives Ohno more genuine smile, “there is hardly any reason for you to be apart.”

Ohno feels his stomach turn. “I will have to ask Nino.”

“I’ve already spoken with him,” Sho says with misplaced assurance. “He said it wasn’t any trouble.”

“Oh,” says Ohno again, hoping the sudden visceral twitch of despair he feels himself give will go unnoticed. “Then it is fine.”

“Thank you!” Sho says, the answer enough to have him already looking much improved from the state Ohno found him it. “I’ll be leaving on the next train, so you’ll excuse me while I rush off to pack. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” Ohno replies weakly.

He watches as Sho hurries down the hall. He’s about to disappear around the corridor when he stops and turns back in Ohno’s direction.

“Oh and one more thing!” he calls out, looking towards Ohno’s feet. “Very nice shoes!”

*

When Ohno finally arrives at the breakfast room, Nino is already there, his new collar pin glistening from under his wool tie even from across the room. In his hand is a piece of toast on which he is carefully spreading Strawberry jam. This can only mean that it is certain to be pushed off on Ohno as soon as he enters the room – Nino has never much liked Strawberry jam.

Across from Nino sits Mai. She is laughing, most likely at something from their conversation. Neither of them notice Ohno’s presence in the least. 

He is about to join them when Mai goes suddenly quiet and her expression peculiar. Although he doesn’t know why, Ohno moves on instinct, stepping back so that he’s safely out of view.

“Kazunari-kun,” Ohno hears Mai say, voice unnecessarily hushed. “Are you very intimate with Satoshi-kun?”

Ohno can no longer see into the room, but he hears the distinct sound of a knife scrapping across toast come to a halt. 

“Pardon?” says Nino.

Mai’s voice picks up again, dripping with hesitation. “That is – well, you seem to be quite in each other’s pockets. And if you’ll be allow me to be selfish for a moment, I have something that’s been weighting on me and I feel that if I don’t confess it soon it will becomes unbearable.”

There a pause and a tea cup clatters gently against its saucer before she continues.

“I know we haven’t been acquainted with each other very long, but you’ve been so kind to me. I haven’t anyone to tell it to except for you. Only I wouldn’t want it to put you into an uncomfortable position with your friend.”

“Don’t worry about that,” comes Nino’s voice, calm and casually reassuring. “If you want to, then please do tell me.”

“Then I shall. But you mustn’t breathe a word of it to poor Satoshi-kun. He is so very sweet and I don’t wish to hurt him. It’s just that – ”

Ohno jumps when the clock in the hall beside him begins to clang the hour. He shakes himself then strains forward to hear Mai’s words over the noise, his heart now beating uncontrollably in his chest.

“ – don’t want to marry him.”

*

Ohno has retreated once again to his room, which is where Nino finds him when he finally returns, bursting through the door triumphantly.

“I’ve momentous news!” he crows, the plate of Strawberry jam-covered toast he’s carrying sliding dangerously in his hand.

“Mai doesn’t want to marry me,” Ohno guesses, even though it’s not really a guess.

Nino scowls. “You knew already! At least let me announce it.”

“Sorry,” says Ohno, not very sorry at all.

Nino hands off the plate of toast and flops down onto Ohno’s bed. 

“Well then, can you believe our luck? Here all this time she was so very upset thinking she should break _your_ heart. As I said, the two of you are much better matched than you suppose. But there’s no need for that now. She has a sweetheart back home – this _J_ – and she has no intention of marrying you if she can get out of it without being disowned by her family.”

Ohno crunches thankfully into a piece of toast. “So what do we do?” he asks, mouth full.

Nino scoots across the bed, close enough to brush the toast crumbs from Ohno’s face. 

“Now,” he says and his smile has just a hint of mischief, “we get your unengaged.”

***

A frazzled Sho only has time for a few more rushed apologies and thanks before he leaves on the afternoon train to London. By teatime, when he is certainly well on his way, Nino decides the time is right. 

They find Mai sitting in her usual chair in the drawing room. She has no book with her today, but there is embroidery in her lap, her needle moving absently in and out the fabric while her thoughts must be in another place entirely.

Before they enter, Nino straightens his tie and fixes his hair. Then he does the same for Ohno. “Ready?” he asks when he’s satisfied that they both look presentable.

Ohno nods and Nino raps gently on the door to alert Mai of their presence.

“May we come in?” he asks.

Mai’s needle stills and she looks up. “Of course,” she says, forcing a smile with little success. “I could use the company.”

“I didn't know you embroidered,” Nino remarks conversationally as he sits down on the sofa. Ohno sits down beside him so close they’re knee to knee until Nino elbows him roughly, knocking him further away.

“Sho has always wanted me to be more dedicated to it, but I detest it,” Mai admits. 

She holds up her hoop to show an alarmingly ugly and terribly executed pastoral scene, depicting several unshapely creatures – sheep perhaps – that can only be differentiated from the rest of the surrounding amorphous greenery because of the scraggily hairs sprouting from every side of them. 

Ohno smiles. “Just like Sho-kun,” he murmurs.

Nino looks as if he is holding in a multitude of pressing questions concerning the work before him, but manages to reign himself in with a quick clearing of his throat. “Mai-chan, regarding what we spoke about this morning.”

Mai nearly drops her embroidery hoop, scraggily-haired creatures and all, to the floor. She looks to Ohno, face reddening. “That was – ” she starts to say.

Nino puts a hand out to stop her. “Please, trust me,” he says. Then he too looks to Ohno. “Oh-chan, tell her.”

Mai looks from Nino to Ohno, from Ohno to Nino, head lolling back and forth between them in dismay.

When Ohno doesn’t say anything, Nino elbows him again, this time more gently. “Go on,” he prompts.

It is with some effort that Ohno drags his attention away from the dreadful embroidery now sitting at his feet and meets Mai’s gaze.

“I don’t want to marry you either,” he says bluntly. 

“Oh,” says Mai. Then, “ _Oh_.”


	4. Chapter 4

“If you didn’t want to marry me, then why did you propose?” is Mai’s first question, logically so, when she can finally find her voice again.

“I thought I was helping,” says Ohno. It’s only half the truth, of course, but he doesn’t dare say more.

“You did help,” Mai assures him as she begins to calm herself. “I don’t know what I would have done – the look on my brother’s face when he saw that letter is something I don’t think I’ll soon forget.”

Ohno reaches down to pick up her embroidery, glancing at it again only briefly before offering it back to her. She takes it from him with a nod of thanks, looks down at it as she shakes her head in disbelief. She begins to laughs and Ohno laughs too. Soon they’re both laughing together, and it’s just as it had been only a few days ago, before this whole mess.

“Are you quite done?” Nino yips from his seat beside them, looking put-upon. “Really, it’s a mercy to all of us that you won’t marry – you would be an insufferable pair,” he scolds. “Now, if you’ll kindly pull yourselves together, I’ve thought that while Sho-kun is elsewhere we might discuss how to handle this going forward.”

“We can break it off?” suggests Ohno immediately, but whatever hopes he’s had of them arriving at such a simple and obvious solution are quickly dashed by the squeak of horror Mai emits.

“No! Oh no please! If we do that, my family will certainly disown me. And my brother has done so much for me. I could not live with myself if I broke his heart.” She gives Ohno a look of great remorse. “I’m so sorry, Satoshi-kun.”

Ohno can make no quarrel, can only say, “It isn't your fault.”

“We can find another option,” says Nino reassuringly, then repeats it again – perhaps to reassure himself. “We can find another way.”

Mai nods, trustingly. “Kazunari-kun, you are such a dear friend. How ever can we repay you?”

Nino shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly and, quite gallantly, does not look in Ohno’s direction. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” he says.

***

They spend the remainder of Christmas day eating cakes and plotting together like school children. At first they remain optimistic in their eventual discovery of some simple solution. But as the hours wear on and all of their more reasonable ideas have been dismissed, those left to be consider become more and more extraordinary.

“Perhaps you should say you have syphilis,” says Nino to Ohno, at the same time pushing more than half of his scone onto Ohno’s plate. 

Mai bursts into laughter. Ohno frowns, first at the scone and then at Nino.

Nino doesn’t stop there, continues with an impish twinkle in his eyes. “An illegitimate child? An opium habit? You’re becoming a man of the cloth?” he suggests helpfully. “Ah! We could tell them about the croquet bat.”

“The what?” asks Mai, at the same time as she fumbles into her dress pocket to pull out a fine looking handkerchief and uses it to wipe the tears of mirth from her eyes. 

“Our dear, sweet Satoshi-kun swung and hit several boys with a croquet bat when he was in school,” says Nino, sounding perhaps a little too gleeful, too proud, for describing an act of violence. “It was a most tremendous scandal!”

Mai shakes her head in astonishment. “I can barely believe it! Whatever was the reason?”

“I was helping a friend,” says Ohno, defensively. 

Nino just smiles and pushes the rest of the scone onto Ohno’s plate contritely. 

“Sadly, I’m not sure that will really be so questionable to my father,” says Mai. “The Sakurais are rather known for their tempers. Sho, in his younger days, once hit another boy quite forcefully with an umbrella and Father thought very little of it. Is there nothing else?”

Ohno is still frowning. “Not particularly,” he admits.

Mai looks disappointed by this response and busies herself with refolding her handkerchief, but not carefully enough to hide the _J_ stitched elegantly into the corner of it. 

“This _J_ ,” Nino muses as he picks up his teacup again, using it to gesture towards the cloth in Mai’s hand. “Does he know about all of this? About the arrangement for you to be married?”

Mai blushes brightly, stuffing the kerchief back into the pocket of her skirt.

“He does,” she says. “But I told him not to worry. I promised him that it would all be settled if he could only be patient… Only he has waited for me so long all ready, I am afraid he will not wait for very much longer.”

Nino gives a disapproving snort into his tea. “If he doesn’t wait, he is a fool,” he mutters into the cup.

Mai leans forward, eyes wide. “Then you would wait for the woman you love?” she asks with some desperation.

Nino puts down his teacup. “I would wait forever if I truly loved someone with all of my heart,” he replies without hesitation.

Mai leans back in her seat, a muddle of emotions passing over her face. “That is some comfort to hear,” she says, quietly. “And I only hope that you are right.”

Ohno’s heart beats delightedly against his rib cage as Nino pointedly ignores him. Even so, Ohno can see the telling twitch of his fingers as they settle in his lap, clasped together to keep himself from reaching out to Ohno, right here in the middle of the room.

Suddenly, Ohno wonders if there might not be a clear, and entirely truthful, solution to their problem.

“There is one more thing,” Ohno blurts out before he thinks better of it, glancing up from Nino’s hands to his face, which stiffens suspiciously even as the words leave Ohno’s mouth.

“There is?” asks Mai hopefully.

“No,” Nino interrupts before Ohno can speak again, his tone strident. He shoots Ohno a deadly look, a warning look, that has Ohno’s mouth snapping shut again dutifully. “I don’t believe that there is.”

Nino smiles, but it is dangerously forced as he turns back to Mai. “But we have time. We will think of something.”

***

When Ohno opens the door to the adjoining room, Nino is not in bed. He’s sitting on the floor this time, legs crisscrossed beneath him and a book resting in between his knees. He doesn’t hear Ohno enter, doesn’t see him as he approaches, his head bent so far forward his spectacles have begun to slip down his nose. 

“What are you reading?” Ohno asks when he’s nearly beside him. 

Nino startles, squinting furiously over the top of his lenses. The book is pushed abruptly aside, Nino’s hand slamming down on the cover to block the title.

“Nothing,” he says.

Nino’s feigned nonchalance is to no avail. Even half-obscured, Ohno knows the cover very well.

“You’re reading _Persuasion_?”

“I was only glancing at it. I thought I’d find out what all the fuss is about.”

Ohno grins. “You’ve heard it. I’ve read it to you.”

“Well you can’t expect me to be listening to the content of everything you choose to read to me,” Nino snaps, face flushing. 

“I don’t expect you to,” says Ohno easily as Nino continues to frown at him, even as he lets Ohno come closer, takes the hand that Ohno offers to help him to his feet, the book dropping unnoticed to the floor. 

When Nino stands, they are nose-to-nose. Nino lifts a hand between then to push his glasses up and he’s biting his tongue, Ohno is sure of it, to keep himself from saying something else. Ohno would ask him, but he knows he won’t need to. He waits patiently for Nino to speak.

Finally Nino is unable to reign himself in anymore. “I would risk everything to be with you and risk nothing to lose you.”

“What do you mean?” asks Ohno, puzzled by Nino’s turn of phrase.

“You were going to tell Mai about – ” Nino pauses, as if he’s struggling for the appropriate words. “About you and I.”

“Would it be so bad if I did?” Ohno asks.

Nino frowns. “It could be very bad,” he says.

“Not so long ago you said that you didn’t care,” Ohno reminds him, though Ohno himself never needs any reminding of then – of the look on Nino’s face as he had told Ohno, so plainly, so bravely, that nothing else mattered.

But perhaps that was then. This Nino, a little older, maybe a little wiser, gives him a sharp look. “That is exactly what I mean. We aren’t at boarding school anymore.”

“I know that. But if they knew, about me, I mean – if it meant that I didn’t have to marry her – ”

For a long, stern moment, Nino does nothing but stare at him.

“What are you saying?” he asks and his voice is prickling now.

“It might help if they knew that I – ”

“Had unnatural proclivities?” Nino cuts in bitterly.

Ohno shakes his head. “That the only person I want to marry is you.”

Nino’s face twitches, but he manages to retain his frown.

“I don’t see how it should make them break the engagement at all. It’s a terrible plan. A naïve plan. The world doesn’t work like that,” says Nino testily, then stops to let out a shaky breath. “I really do think you might consider syphilis. It is obviously the best solution.”

Ohno shakes his head again and they are still so close that their noses bump together as he does so. “No.”

Nino sighs, resting his forehead on Ohno’s shoulder. “And what shall we do if we can’t think of something better? Will you obediently march down the aisle?”

“I’ll run away with you,” Ohno tells him, finally speaks aloud what he’s been thinking from the very start.

Nino huffs a laugh into the crook of Ohno’s neck. “Oh really? Where might we go?”

“You’ve always wanted to play baseball,” Ohno suggests.

Nino hums, contemplatively, as if he’s considering it. Then he shakes his head, his hair tickling under Ohno’s chin.

“I am an excellent pitcher, but I think that ship may have sailed for us what with that pesky bit of xenophobia that’s been going round across the pond.” He shifts forward, his hand coming up to wiggle underneath the rounded collar of Ohno’s pajamas, fingers warm against Ohno’s skin. “Besides I’ve grown rather fond of cricket.”

Ohno doesn’t argue. He hadn’t expected Nino to answer any differently, no matter how much he’d hoped for it. Nino’s life is here, in England, and Ohno’s life is here too as long as Nino’s is. And in truth, running away won’t solve anything at all.

For a while, they stand together quietly. Absently, Ohno wonders if Nino can feel the constant beat of Ohno’s heart against his fingers, wonders if Nino knows it only beats that way for him.

“Will you read to me?” Ohno asks.

Nino lifts his head and narrows his eyes at Ohno through his spectacles. “What? From your beloved Austenite tome?”

“It’s Janeite,” Ohno corrects as Nino puts a hand in his hair, tugs a little petulantly.

“As you say,” Nino concedes with a fond huff. “But I had rather hoped you’d called on me for some other reason.”

He pulls at Ohno’s hair again, firmly enough for Ohno to understand it as a directive, and Ohno leans in across the tiniest of distances still left between them so that Nino can kiss him. 

The kiss is soft, gentle, but it makes Ohno as light-headed as it always has – as it always will. When Nino sighs against his lips, Ohno feels such an intense pang of affection he has to curl his fingers into the front of Nino’s pajamas to keep himself steady. Nino is smiling now, Ohno can taste it, and he follows without resistance when Nino starts to back them towards his bed.

This morning had been rushed and desperate, with little time for anything before they risked being missed downstairs. Here and now, there isn’t any reason to hurry. Nino touches Ohno slowly, deliberately. Just for now, it feels as if they have forever lain out before them. 

“Satoshi,” Nino breathes, pressing his fingertips to Ohno’s eyelids. It’s a childish gesture, but Ohno’s heart catches in his throat all the same.

“Kazu,” he says, leaning closer to nose at Nino’s cheek. Nino’s fingers slip down to touch his lips and Ohno kisses them each in turn. 

“Don’t ever leave me again,” Nino scolds, only a little jokingly.

“I never did,” Ohno protests and Nino laughs, though it comes out more of a pant as Ohno moves to brush his lips against the curve of Nino’s neck. 

“Promise me anyway,” he commands. “Tell me.”

Ohno chuckles, but he pulls back enough to look at Nino directly as he obliges. “I promise.”

Nino nods his head and Ohno is falsely assured of his appeasement – but then Nino’s eyes are darkening tellingly, his fingers digging sharply into Ohno’s skin. 

“Now show me.”

***

When Sho returns from London a few days later, a definitive plan for matrimonial escape has still not been well formed. While Ohno has held on to a vague and desperate hope that the death of the Emperor will have caused Sho to forget the entire thing, he has no such luck. Sho has been home for no more than an hour when he asks Ohno for a private meeting.

“Buck up,” Nino insists when Ohno begins to panic over the invitation. “You know very well he doesn't bite. And don’t go getting accidentally engaged to _him_ while you’re in there.”

Sho asks for Ohno to meet him in his father’s office. Ohno gets lost twice on his way to find it, having only ventured near it in passing during their first tour of the house, when Sho had pointed it out to them hurriedly and hadn’t lingered. 

The room itself is one of the most imposing places Ohno has ever entered, robust in dark, glossy wood and striking furnishings. A large lacquered desk with ivory detailing takes up most of the room. Distracted by the rest of the décor, it takes a moment for Ohno to realize that Sho is not sitting behind it. In fact, Sho is as far from it as he can possibly be, standing in front of a bookcase on the other side of the room.

“Satoshi-kun, come in,” he says with a smile, this one even more exhausted than the one he gave Ohno before he left. “Please sit down.” 

He gestures towards a chair in front of the desk, then settles himself in the seat beside Ohno rather than across from him. 

“I can’t stand to sit behind the monstrosity,” he admits sheepishly, gesturing to the desk.  
Then he clears his throat.

“Thank you for meeting with me. I apologise for having had to rush off so suddenly before we could properly speak about the engagement. But I hope you know that I couldn’t be happier for the two of you. Nor could I ask for a better husband to take care of my sister. You’ve always been such a dear friend and I so much want for Mai to be happier than I’ve been. Shu too.”

“You’re so unhappy?” Ohno asks in surprise.

As the words leave Ohno’s mouth, Sho’s smile drops from his lips. For the first time, Ohno recognizes it – the subtle way misery has seeped into Sho’s features, into the very lines of his face. It’s something that Ohno has seen before. He has seen it in his own reflection – the same look was in his own eyes in those dark years when depression had weighed heavily on him, as it so clearly does now on Sho. Ohno is only sorry that in all these days he’s been so wrapped up in his own troubles that he hadn’t noticed it.

Sho puts a hand through his hair, disarranging it as he makes his confession. “Things have been so difficult, Satoshi-kun, since I left England. And I feel the weight of a life that is not what I desire heavy on my shoulders. I would not wish that on anyone else.”

Ohno swallows, throat suddenly dry, as Sho continues.

“But when things have been most difficult, I have always tried to remind myself of you, and how much worse it must have been for you to find yourself alone at that wretched school with your atrocious English.” He pauses to give Ohno a fond look. “My letters found you well, but I have always suspected that you made sure they did, for my sake. I’ve often hoped for the chance to verify this for myself.”

Ohno thinks of denying it, but somehow he can’t bring himself to do it, not in the face of Sho’s frankness, of his sincerity. 

“Yes, it was very bad for a time,” he admits. 

“You couldn’t return to Japan?” asks Sho in a voice that suggests, just as he’s said, that he has been waiting to ask this question for a long time.

Ohno shakes his head. “I wrote to my parents as soon as you left and asked to come home. Mama would have let me, but my father – he thought that I would benefit from staying, even without you. Even though I’d only been sent in the first place to be your companion.”

“It was more than that – ” Sho protests.

“No,” Ohno says, without spite. “I was sent to be with you. My schoolwork would never have gotten me accepted if my application had not been sent in by the Ambassador.”

Sho frowns, but stays silent.

“After you left,” Ohno hears himself say. “That first year, they beat me almost every day. I thought I’d never make it. I thought I would die.”

His hand goes absently to his shirtfront, presses against his ribs. There’s a scar there, underneath the protective layers of his clothing. Though it’s faded enough now to be more memory than anything else, Ohno cannot forget the way Nino has never been able to look directly at it, how he always turns his gaze away from it as if it’s something he cannot bear to see. 

Ohno had never been like Nino. In the end, Nino had won over his tormentors, with persistent charm and impeccable English. Ohno had not.

“But it improved?” Sho prompts, gently, and Ohno startles at the sound of his voice. 

He blinks, only to be surprised by the unexpected wetness in his eyes. “When I became a senior, they finally left me alone. And after that Nino arrived,” he says with some emotion. “It wasn’t so bad then.”

“Yes, thank goodness for Nino,” Sho says, his own eyes looking glossy with unshed tears. “You needed a friend when I had so terribly abandoned you. We all need a friend as good as Nino.”

It’s strange to talk about these things, to say them aloud. But Ohno has remembered now how many years Sho was his dearest confident, his best and only friend. It seems so very long ago, though it had been for more than half his life. 

Again Ohno feels the heavy weight of his lies, of his dishonestly, towards someone who has only ever thought warmly of him even when they were thousands of miles apart. Without Sho, Ohno would never have gone to England. Without Sho, Ohno may never have met Nino. But it’s for Nino that Ohno must keep his mouth shut tight – and not only for Nino now, but for Mai too, who Sho loves better than anyone in the world.

“That is why I'm so truly glad about you and Mai,” Sho says, reaching out to place a warm hand on Ohno’s shoulder. “Because I will know for certain that you are happy now. For me, that is enough. I hold the happiness of you both well above my own.”

Ohno can only nod, blinking back the tears so threatening to spill down his cheeks. Silently, he hopes that Sho will someday know the truth, and that when he does, he will be able to forgive them for everything.

Sho gives Ohno’s shoulder an amiable squeeze before letting him go. He grins and this time it looks absolutely genuine. 

“Now enough of this serious business! I thought perhaps you and Mai would like to have an outing together – something a bit more _romantic_ than your evenings at home with your tiresome chaperones? The roads have cleared up considerably so I’ve taken it upon myself to call for the car. There’s nothing so romantic as an evening drive, wouldn’t you agree?”

***

For the first few miles, they drive in silence. It’s not a particularly uncomfortable silence and Ohno is reminded again of Nino’s previous accusations – that he and Mai would have made a good couple if they’d chosen to give in to the obligation.

Ohno finds himself laughing aloud at the thought of it. From the driver’s seat, Mai gives him a questioning glance.

“Nino says that you and I would make a good couple,” Ohno tells her.

Mai giggles. “Would we?” she wonders. “I suppose we would. Such a shame then, that neither of us is in love with the other.”

Ohno nods, finally relaxing back into his seat to enjoy the ride. The drive is romantic, just as Sho had supposed it would be, and especially so at this time of day when the sun’s descent is just beginning to set the clouds alight with colour. It is only too bad, Ohno thinks sincerely, that Nino would never be able to enjoy it without the evening ending in his being sick on the side of the road.

“Satoshi-kun,” Mai says, startling Ohno from his thoughts. “May I ask if you are spoken for?”

The car has its top up tonight, but even so, Ohno can see the sharp exhale of his breath turned to smoke in the air around them.

Beside him, Mai’s gloved hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I suppose I only wondered if you have someone that you love.”

Ohno watches himself take a steady breath in and an unsteady breath out. He does not answer – Nino had told him not to tell.

“It’s Kazunari-kun, isn’t it?” says Mai quietly. “You are in love with each other.”

_Yes._ Ohno thinks, and it’s as if the word is hanging motionless, petrified, in the haze of white that leaves his lips.

“I though so,” says Mai and only then does Ohno realizes he’s said it for her to hear. “The way you look at one another – I didn’t know the meaning of it at first. But when you were dancing together on Christmas Eve, the two of you, I finally understood it.” 

Ohno swallows. “Mai – ” he starts. 

“It’s fine, I’m not shocked. I know that these things happen. And by the way you look at each other, I think you must make one another very happy.” She turns to him and smiles. “We would all be so very lucky to have someone who looks at us with such deep affection.”

Ohno is speechless in the face of such a positive estimation, but even if he had the words to reply he has no chance to say them when he is nearly jolted out of his seat. The car begins to swerve violently, skidding across a patch of dark, glassy ice on the road beneath them.

Mai lets out a cry of surprise, the steering wheel jerking in her hands as the car spins outwards, sliding from the road and towards the ditch beside it. Ohno is jolted again. He grapples for something to hang on to, but it’s too late. He feels himself being thrown from the vehicle and he hits the snowy ground with a disorienting thump. 

“Satoshi-kun!” Mai shouts. 

Ohno can’t see. There is something streaming down into his eyes, blurring his vision, and he can only make out the uncertain shape of the car as it teeters above him.

Then Mai is reaching out to grab him by the arm and, with all of her strength, tugs him towards her. It’s just in time as the car comes crashing down on its side, then rolls over completely in the snow where Ohno had just been lying.

They sit there in the snow, panting and staring at the overturned car, as the shock disperses. 

Mai is the first to regain herself. “You’re bleeding,” she says gently. 

She takes off the silk scarf wound around her neck and uses it to dab at Ohno’s face, clearing his sight, before pressing it firmly to his temple.

“Thank you,” says Ohno, shakily. “Thank you for saving me.”

Mai only nods. “This cut looks very bad, I’m afraid,” she says in a worried tone as she starts to tie the scarf securely around Ohno’s head. “We should return to the house so we can send for the doctor.”

Glancing back at the car, upside down in the snow, she adds, “We’ll have to go by foot, but it isn’t so far if we cut through the countryside.”

She starts to stand, then lets out a yelp of pain, falling back. 

“My ankle,” she hisses, through gritted teeth. 

“Are you all right?” Ohno asks in concern.

She lifts up the edge of her skirt and he tries not to feel ill at the sight of her foot, twisted unnaturally inside her brown galoshes.

“Yes, I’ll manage,” she insists even as her face pales considerably. 

She tries to stand again, face screwed up with anguish though she valiantly remains upright. She takes a tentative step forward and her hand flies up to cover the wail that escapes from her mouth.

“You can’t,” says Ohno, quickly rising up beside her. “Here, let me carry you.”

Mai shakes her head with alarm though her eyes are tearful with discomfort. “No, really, Satoshi-kun. There’s no need. I can manage – _oh_!”

Ignoring her protests, Ohno steps forward and sweeps Mai up into his arms. 

“ _Oh_!” she says again, sounding a little overcome as her hands reach up automatically to circle around his neck, clinging to him.

“Which way?” he asks her.

“That way,” she answers breathlessly, letting go of him only long enough to point towards the horizon.

Ohno starts off.

*

It is slow going. Mai is sure enough of the direction they must go in, but the sun has long since set, leaving them in cold and dark with nothing concrete to mark their journey or to keep them on the right track. It starts to snow again, and with each step, Ohno’s footprints disappear behind him, leaving them stranded and invisible in a sea of white.

Ohno’s head is throbbing, his vision going in and out of focus. In his arms, Mai is clearly suffering. He can feel her laboured breathing against his chest. When she begins to shiver, he stops, puts her down long enough to take off his coat and have her wrap it around herself. She does not protest, does not even speak, and her silence is more disheartening even than the unrelenting snow. 

Ohno heart begins to sink. Nino is waiting for him, he tell himself as he treks on. Nino will be waiting. If he can just carry on, Nino will be there to scold him properly about his head and to lecture him about traipsing off without any idea of where he is going.

On the other hand, if instead he freezes out here in the snow, after everything, after all they've been through in these past few days, in these past few years – if after all that, Ohno were to be lost out here, Nino would be very angry with him.

Ohno wants to laugh, thinking of Nino’s angry expression, his glare when faced with the block of ice that Ohno would become. He feels the warm puff of air push forward from the back of his throat and it makes him light-headed. His vision snaps out of focus again, this time enough so that he loses his balance. He trips and falls to his knees as a memory floods all his senses.

_Nino arrives straight from cricket practice, his whites messy and askew from an afternoon in the fray._

_“Oh-chan,” he says, grinning ear to ear with satisfaction as he’s dirties up all of Ohno’s belongings, his cricket bat left in the middle of the floor, his shoes in a messy pile beside them._

_Ohno is frowning by the time Nino invites himself comfortably into Ohno’s bed, but Nino easily ignores his complaints, grabs him by the front of his waistcoat and laughs into his mouth._

_“Oh-chan,” he’s said again, boyish and bright. “I rather think we should spend the rest of our lives together. What do you say?”_

It was said lightheartedly, but Ohno had taken it with more seriousness, more sincerity, than anything in his entire life. From that day on, from those words on, Ohno has not ever, even for a moment, considered it wouldn't be so – that they would not spend the rest of their lives together. Even when he had proposed to Mai, he had done it with the intention of keeping Nino with him, of making their lives together better – for Nino.

It’s been three years, but it can be a thousand, and Nino will always be the only thing that will ever matter. 

Ohno blinks, not sure how long his eyes have been closed. Snow is seeping, wet and icy-cold, into his trousers. He takes a deep breath and musters all of his strength. He stands, stumbles again, but keeps himself upright. Mai stirs just barely in his arms, but if she can speak, she doesn’t. Ohno tightens his hold around her as he finally makes it to his feet. 

He promised Nino that he would not leave him and he will not let him down.

He starts to walk again.

*

There is no way to judge the passing of time anymore, but it feels like hours, days, before Mai lifts her head from his chest and calls out softly in recognition. 

“On the other side of this hill,” she says and Ohno can only nod in relief.

The hill is formidable, slippery and steep, but Ohno pushes on, pushed up, until he is looking down into the valley below. There is the Sakurai House, just as Mai said it would be, shimmering majestically in the winter landscape around it. 

Ohno feels as if he could collapse again, this time in thankfulness, in happiness. He is too tired to cry, too tired to speak, just shakes all the way down to his toes. 

Mai tightens her hold around his neck reassuringly. “Thank you, Satoshi-kun,” she whispers.

But there’s still a little further to go. Ohno starts down the hill and he’s only halfway before his shifting vision makes out the figure standing, shivering, on the front steps of the house. 

Even from afar, Ohno knows who it is. 

Nino gives a shout and takes off running towards them. Behind him, a second figure – Sho – stumbles out the open house doorway and begins to run after him. 

“Can you stand?” Ohno asks Mai.

She nods and he places her gently on the ground beside him as she tugs his coat more closely around her.

It’s just in time. Nino is upon them only a moment later, knocking into Ohno and toppling him over onto the snowy ground before kissing him desperately.

“Idiot!” he growls when he pulls away. He’s fisted both hands into the front of Ohno’s snow-soaked jumper and he starts to shake him roughly. “Idiot idiot idiot! You said you wouldn’t leave me! You promised me! I thought you were dead!”

Sho has reached them too now, quickly moving to support Mai with an arm around her waist. Ohno has trouble taking in his expression through all of the shaking, but it’s clear at least that he has not missed Nino's dramatic display – that has seen more than enough.

Sho turns to Mai, eyes wide and mouth moving wordlessly, but before he can speak, Mai blurts out, “Sho, I don’t want to marry Satoshi-kun.”

“Wh-what?” Sho manages to stutter, already looking like a madman, his hair standing on end in every direction from an evening of rending it with worry.

“I don’t want to marry him,” she says again, more forcefully. “I’m in love with someone else. And I will not marry him even if you say I must.”

Sho glances in Ohno’s direction. Nino is still shaking him, though he has lost some of the force of it as Ohno puts a hand on his cheek to calm him.

“He doesn’t want to marry me either,” Mai explains.

“I – I suppose I can see that,” says Sho diplomatically.

“Idiot!” Nino says again, oblivious to the goings-on around him, his furious gaze never moving from Ohno's face. “Don’t you ever leave my sight again!”

Nino’s angry expression is just as Ohno had imagined it would be, only better, because it is right here in front of him.

“Yes, Kazu,” he says obediently and lets himself be shaken.

***

A local constable had found the abandoned car several hours ago and, recognizing the former Ambassador’s emblem, he had reported immediately to the Sakurai House to alert the Ambassador’s horrified son of the distressing scene. Upon his arrival at the accident, he informed an increasingly panicked Sho, the snow had not yet accumulated sufficiently to conceal the stumbling footprints and the blood – enough blood for it to look very bad. However, no trail could be followed as the precipitation erased clues faster than they could be kept up with. The constable had advised that Mr. Sakurai prepare himself for the worse.

Nino’s anger subsides, eventually, and by the time they’ve made it into the house he has quieted into silence. He remains silent even as the doctor arrives to check Mai and Ohno’s injuries, though he hovers as close to Ohno as he dares in the physician’s presence. When he is asked to fetch Ohno’s pajamas, he returns from his errand with eyes suspiciously red-rimmed. 

It’s late by the time the doctor leaves, but no one is at all ready to sleep. Instead, the four of them find themselves once again gathered in the drawing room with quite a few questions to be answered.

“Why didn’t either of you tell me any of this before?” Sho says, sounding paternally vexed as he piles cold teacakes onto his plate.

“It was my fault. I asked Satoshi-kun not to say anything,” Mai admits. She winces as she shifts her set ankle more comfortably atop the stack of pillows its been propped up on. “I was afraid that if I told you, you would say that I must go through with it anyway.”

Sho drops the teacake that is halfway to his mouth. “Surely you know that I would never say you must do anything! Your happiness is my greatest priority.”

He reaches out to take his sister’s hand. “Mai, Father has already stopped me from doing what I love. Do not let him stop you from anything.”

He turns to Ohno – and Nino, sitting closely, silently, beside him. “And as for you Satoshi-kun, Nino, I think you are the most suitable of pairs I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and I wish you nothing but the best."  
Ohno manages a weak smile for him. Nino remains still.

“But I do understand your fear," Sho continues. "Our father will not be pleased – nor will Satoshi-kun’s. They’ve had this in mind, you know, since we were all very small. Still, there will be a way out of it – we must only find it.”

“We have been trying to,” Mai says in despair. “We thought perhaps if only Father could find Satoshi-kun unsuitable, he would let us break the arrangement.”

Sho ponders this seriously, the teacakes now untouched on his plate. Finally, his face lights up and he claps his hands in triumph.

“Satoshi-kun, I suppose you will lose your inheritance if you refuse to marry? Is that something you have already taken into account?”

Ohno nods. “Yes. Though I had hoped to finish university first.”

“If you are willing to give up your claim, the problem will be easily solved. Father will never let Mai marry a pauper. Perhaps I am revealing too much, but you may already have guessed that we’ve been short of funds – that’s why we’re selling this estate.”

“You’re poor?” says a small, baffled voice and it takes Ohno a moment to realize that it’s Nino who has spoken.

“Oh yes,” says Sho, with good-natured indifference. “And poorer every day.”

Nino puts his head in his hands, clearly distressed.

“I’m sure this plan will work,” Sho says. “And more than that we have time to execute it to the best of our advantage. What with His Imperial Majesty’s death, I had no chance – nor did I think it right – to announce your engagement to anyone at all. So we shall act as if nothing has occurred until Satoshi-kun finishes his studies. After that – ”

He looks to Ohno, politely waiting for him to make the final covenant. But Ohno is only looking at Nino, who has slowly raised his head again to stare back at him.

“You’ll renounce your inheritance,” Nino tells him, eyes still a little red.

“But the money – ” Ohno starts, unsure.

“What money?” Nino mutters affectionately. 

He turns to Sho and, for the first time all evening, he smiles. “He’ll do it.”

***

Their train leaves first thing in the morning, but Ohno ignores Nino’s sleepy protests in regards to this fact as he coaxes him down to the empty ballroom. 

“What is this about?” Nino complains, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist, his other hand tangled comfortably with Ohno’s. It’s been a few days since the accident and Nino hasn’t yet relented to letting Ohno out of his sight. But after weeks of forced distance in polite company, Ohno has enjoyed such steadfast attention.

He tugs Nino further into the room, bringing them to a stop in front of the uncovered piano. “This,” he says, gesturing towards it with their clasped hands.

“If you’re asking me to play, then you should know very well that it's too late for such a thing. Besides, we’d wake the entire house if – ”

“It’s yours,” Ohno blurts out.

Nino blink, then blinks again, clearly unsure as to whether or not he’s misheard Ohno’s outburst. “Pardon?”

“I got a very good price,” says Ohno, proudly.

Nino is wide-awake now, all traces of his former sleepiness completely evaporated. “You – you’ve purchased it?”

“Yes,” is Ohno’s simple answer. “For you.”

“But, but, but –” Nino stutters in endearing disbelief, crushing Ohno’s hand in his own even as he drags them both forward to touch the piano possessively. “Where will I possibly find a place to keep it?”

“Oh. Well,” says Ohno. “I bought a house too. For us to live in.” 

The colour drains from Nino’s face. He looks around the room despairingly. “ _This one?_ ”

“No!” says Ohno quickly. “No, it’s in Oxfordshire. I’ve been saving up for a while. I always thought, after we graduated, that you might want to – ” 

He trails off, embarrassed under the growing intensity of Nino’s gaze. 

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he says instead. “I called over yesterday morning to have the final payment sent. Before you woke,” he adds when Nino raises an eyebrow.

Nino is still only staring at him so Ohno continues, flustered.

“It isn’t very much compared to this place but – now you can feel as if we still have the money,” he explains faintly.

“You bought an entire house?” Nino asks.

Ohno shrugs. “Sho-kun agreed that it would be a good investment when I asked his opinion on it.”

“Satoshi,” Nino says and his expression is so very serious. “What does it mean?”

“It means – ” says Ohno, a bit more confidently – and this is what he has been meaning to say from the start – “It means that the only person I want to marry is you and I wouldn’t give you up for all the tea in China. If you’ll have me.”

Nino’s expression does not change, but there is a look in his eyes that Ohno knows – though not so long ago he might not have been able to recognize it. 

“Are you sure?” Nino asks.

Ohno squeezes their still clasped hands, then catches up Nino’s other hand too. “Remember what you told me when I wasn’t sure?”

Nino shakes his head, but it’s clear from the sudden, subtle curl of his lips that he does. Ohno’s certain that he does – Nino never forgets.

Ohno is happy to repeat it anyway. “You said that you would be sure enough for the both of us.”

“Did I?” Nino asks and he’s grinning now, wide enough to show the pink of his gums.

“I’m sure enough for both of us,” Ohno says with every bit of his self-assurance. “I'm older and wiser than you anyhow. And I rather think we should spend the rest of our lives together. What do you say?”

Nino nods his head. “Yes, Senpai,” he says and kisses Ohno with so much gusto that he knocks them both into the piano and wakes the entire house.

*

And from then on, they spend the rest of their lives together.

[ ************ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSqfP1tVBeE)


	5. Chapter 5

A YEAR LATER

The front door to the house opens quietly and Ohno glances towards it to see Nino sneaking in, his hat in one hand and a pile of mail in the other.

“À la semaine prochaine,” Ohno says, dismissing the small class in front of him.

“Oui, Monsieur Ohno!” the girls chorus dutifully and begin to collect their things.

Nino holds the door open for them as they file out, giggling and chatting in both English and Japanese. The last member of the little group is just passing him by when he stops her, tugging on her braid. He crouches down to speak to her. 

“Ayumi-chan, have you been practicing your scales properly this time?” he asks her.

The girl’s eyes bulge suspiciously, but she nods her head. “Yes Ninomiya-sensei!” she chirps.

Nino hums incredulously. “Are you absolutely _certain_?”

She nods her head more vigorously. “Yes, Ninomiya-sensei!”

Nino turns to hide an amused smile in the palm of his hand until he can face her again with a solemn expression. “Is that so? Then you shall play them for me perfectly at your lesson on Saturday, I suppose?”

“Yes, Nino!” she says eagerly.

He tugs on her braid again. “ _Ninomiya-sensei_ ,” he corrects her with playful sternness.

She giggles, then turns on her heels to skip off after the others. Nino closes the door behind her, clicking the lock firmly into place before he crosses the room.

“I’m home,” he murmurs as he drapes himself around Ohno, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“Welcome home,” Ohno replies.

Nino leans in to kiss him – once, twice – then looking as if he would be finished, comes back once more for a third kiss, like he can’t help himself.

“I darned your socks today,” Ohno says happily when Nino has finally been satisfied. “I’m getting much better at it.”

“Have you?” says Nino as he noses at Ohno’s cheek. “You’re becoming quite an agreeable housewife!”

He pulls back, disentangling them enough to hand Ohno the mail. As Ohno begins to shuffle through the pile, Nino collapses onto the sofa with an arm thrown over his eyes. He shifts only a little as Ohno sits down beside him.

“What’s this?” Ohno asks Nino, holding up a large, lumpy parcel.

It’s a rhetorical question, so Ohno doesn’t mind when Nino makes no effort to respond other than a non-committal mumble. He tugs at the parcel’s brown paper and string until it’s open and out falls the most truly hideous piece of embroidery Ohno has ever seen.

“Ah!” he says. “It’s from Mai.”

Nino peeks out from underneath his elbow.

“Horrifying!” he yelps, arm dropping away from his face completely as Ohno pushes the embroidered piece into his lap. “What ever are we meant to do with such a terrifying thing?" 

“It will look nice on the piano, I think,” Ohno remarks.

Nino balks. “Only as a punishment to inattentive students.”

Ohno laughs, already looking further into the open package. As he does so, a card of paper slips out of it and falls to the floor. He reaches down to retrieve it.

“It’s Mai’s engagement announcement,” he tells Nino in surprise as he looks over the gold embossed lettering.

“Really?” says Nino, still engrossed in his perusal of the frightful needlework. “And does it reveal, finally, that mysterious lover called ‘ _J_ ’?”

“Yes,” says Ohno. 

He squints down apprehensively at the kanji, relieved when he finds a name spelled out in English lettering just below it. 

“Matsumoto Jun,” he reads.

Nino bolts up from his seat, his eyes round as saucers. 

“Did you say… _Matsumoto Jun?_ ”

**END.**


End file.
